“Bring wolves, not guns,” Dicks tells Park Service

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

OLYMPIC NATIONAL
PARK––Norm Dicks (D-Washington)
has killed National Park Service
efforts to exterminate supposedly
non-native mountain goats in
Olympic National Park.
“In recent months, the
park’s plan to shoot the goats drew
the ire of so many of Dicks’ West
Sound constituents,” wrote Seattle
Times outdoor columnist Ron Judd,
“that he launched a mini-investigation.
His finding: The park was, at
best, being disingenuous about
alleged ‘damage’ from goats. At
worst, it was lying. Dicks, who
says he is supported by the rest of
Washington’s delegation, recently
called park officials to his office and
made a subtle suggestion: Bag the
goat shoot, or I’ll bag it for you.”

Investigation by American
Zoo Association conservation and
science director Michael Hutchins
indicates that the goats may not have
lived in the Olympic mountains until
translocated from the Cascades for
hunting purposes, possibly on several
occasions, within the past 120
years. But they haven’t overpopulated,
Dicks’ experts believe, and
won’t if their own plan to reintroduce
wolves to Olympic National
Park succeeds. Fifty to 100 wolves
would be airlifted to the park from
Alaska or Canada. The plan is
apparently endorsed by Olympic
National Park supervisor David
Morris, Defenders of Wildlife, and
Paul Joslin of the Whales & Wolves
Conservation Society in Des
Moines, Washington.
Joslin told ANIMAL
PEOPLE that before the 1995
Yellowstone wolf reintroduction, he
favored Olympic National Park as
site for a first experiment with wolf
reintroduction, as public opinion in
the vicinity is more favorable and
the chances of wolves being shot for
harassing livestock are less, with
only one nearby cattle ranch.