Like humans, mountain goats are deeply tied to place; they need not just the wild, but the wild they know. Together, we can ensure the landscapes they rely on remain healthy and whole.
Update: Until July 15, every donation for mountain goats is being matched, up to $10,000! To have twice the impact on these alpine sentinels, donate today.
How do you capture in words the feeling of home? Of knowing a place so deeply that the sense of it is ingrained in your soul; its patterns, quirks, seasons and cycles so familiar you can predict them as you would those of a lifelong partner.
For me, this is the lands and waters around Kimberley — the landscape I call home. This is the place where I was born and where I returned to raise my family. Here, I know where the first wildflowers will emerge, when to plant my garden based on the receding snowline on the mountains above, and where the first larches will turn gold each fall.
It’s difficult, now, to imagine living anywhere else. And yet if I had to move, my life would go on. Humans are lucky like that; we can adapt to live almost anywhere. Push a mountain goat out of the crags and valleys it calls home, and it won’t be so lucky.
The wild they know
For mountain goats, knowing a place — where to shelter from a winter storm or find sustenance in deep snow, which terrain offers escape from the jaws of predators, and which licks to go to for salts and minerals — is to survive.
In British Columbia, we’re responsible for protecting half of the world’s mountain goats. Many of them live in my extended backyard: in the southern Rockies, Purcells and Selkirks.
These alpine sentinels face many threats, but almost all of them come down to the loss or degradation of their wild homes. And if a mountain goat loses its home, its chances of survival plummet.
Over Wildsight’s more than three decades of conservation, people like you have been integral in protecting landscapes like the Height of the Rockies Provincial Park, the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy and the upper Elk River Valley. It’s no coincidence that today, these are the areas in which the latest surveys show this region’s mountain goat populations are doing best, while elsewhere, they’ve declined by up to 30%.
Mountain goats need the wild. They need remote, mountainous areas with minimal human influence. And together, we can ensure the landscapes they rely on remain healthy and whole.
Safeguarding a future for mountain goats
With your help, we’ll break down the latest research around how recreation impacts goats and other species so we can find a pathway to sustainable coexistence together.
We’ll support Indigenous-led efforts to secure formal landscape protections. And we’ll work with industry, government and the public to reduce the density of logging roads in B.C.’s backcountry and protect important wildlife habitats.
But none of this can happen without the support of people like you. Until June 30, some of our generous donors have offered to match every donation for mountain goats, up to $10,000, for twice the impact on their wild homes.
give to protect their wild homes
Our encounters with mountain goats are often indirect: a tuft of fur on a tree branch or a clump of pellets by the path. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, it’s a shaggy white shape glimpsed on a distant ridgeline. Rarely are they closer, and that is as it should be.
Like me, and perhaps like you too, mountain goats are deeply tied to place — and it’s up to all of us to defend their wild homes. Will you join me with a donation today?
For the wild,
Robyn Duncan
Wildsight Executive Director
