Oreamnos

Abstract: Management policy of the U.S. National Park Service regarding mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) in Olympic National Park, Washington, is founded in part on the argument that alpine environments there evolved through the late Quaternary without mountain goats. Descendants of mountain goats artificially introduced to park lands in the 1920s are being experimentally sterilized and translocated to control population size. The potential that Oreamnos sp. colonized and inhabited the Olympic Mountains during the late Quaternary is, however, great. Prehistoric and historic extralimital records of mountain goats in Oregon and northern California, the Wisconsin glacial and floral histories, and the modern distributions of other alpine and subalpine mammalian taxa suggest the Puget lowland served as a biogeographic filter rather than a barrier for mammalian taxa during periods of maximum glacial extent. Extirpation of isolated mountain goat populations on mountains of Oregon, California, and Washington apparently...

Abstract: Evidence for bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) infection was detected in 2009-10 while investigating a pneumonia die-off in Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis canadensis), and sympatric mountain goats (Oreamnos americanum) in adjacent mountain ranges in Elko County, Nevada. Seroprevalence to BVDV-1 was 81% (N=32) in the bighorns and 100% (N=3) in the mountain goats. Serosurveillance from 2011 to 2015 of surviving bighorns and mountain goats as well as sympatric mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), indicated a prevalence of 72% (N=45), 45% (N=51), and 51% (N=342) respectively. All species had antibody titers to BVDV1 and BVDV2. BVDV1 was isolated in cell culture from three bighorn sheep and a mountain goat kid. BVDV2 was isolated from two mule deer. Six deer (N=96) sampled in 2013 were positive for BVDV by antigen-capture ELISA on ear notch. Wild ungulates and cattle concurrently graze public and private lands in these two mountain ranges, thus providing potential for interspecies viral transmission. Like cattle, mule deer, mountain goats, and bighorn sheep can be infected with BVDV and can develop clinical disease including immunosuppression. Winter migration patterns that increase densities and species interaction during the first and second trimester of gestation may contribute to the long term maintenance of the virus in these wild ungulates. More studies are needed to determine the population level impacts of BVDV infection on these three species.

Abstract: Prior to 1921, the only big game animal indigenous to the Kodiak Island group was the Kodiak bear ( Ursus middendorffi). Big game animals introduced to the Islands in recent years have been: deer (Odocoileus hemionus sitkensis), 1924, elk (Cervus canadensis roosevelti), 1928, and mountain goats (Oreamnos kennedyi), 1952. This paper reports the success of the introduction of the Roosevelt elk, their present population and distribution, local habits and characteristics, and the hunting harvest.

Abstract: A mountain goat cranial fragment from gravels beneath two thick glacial tills near Quesnel Forks, British Columbia is referred to Oreamnos sp. It is considered to be of last (Sangamon) interglacial age, or older. Oreamnos seems to have entered North America from Eurasia across the Bering Isthmus during a Pleistocene glaciation prior to the last (Wisconsin) glaciation.