Courtesy of Danielle Langloism, Wikipedia CCLYellowstone’s mountain goats
The couple who took this photo have been living full time in a recreational vehicle since 1993 and say they still love every minute of it. Right now they’re in Yellowstone National Park where they took photos of mountain goats and posted them to their blog “Our Bus And Us.”
The National Park Service considers mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) an exotic/non-native species, which were introduced for sport hunting outside Yellowstone Park in the Absaroka/Beartooth Region in the 1940s and 1950s.
During the 1990s, the goats expanded their range through the high peaks in the northern part of Yellowstone. Aerial counts of mountain goats inside or within one kilometer of the park increased from 24 goats in 1997 to 160 goats in 2004, the last year such information was available.
While the goats now are considered part of the park’s ecosystem, park officials say there’s concern the goats are competing for habitat with native bighorn sheep, whose range overlaps with the mountain goats.
