WWU works with Sauk-Suiattle on mountain goat study

(Western Washington University environmental science professor David) Wallin is among a group of researchers studying the regional decline of mountain goats.

It’s a collaboration kick-started by the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe, for whom the mountain goat is important historically and culturally, and includes lead biologists from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife as well as the U.S. Forest Service.

They’ve studied the causes for the drop and are considering how to boost those numbers. The implications go beyond the goats, which are icons of wild places and the Cascades.

“They are representative of the alpine environment and that environment’s health,” said Leslie Parks, a graduate student in WWU’s Huxley College of the Environment who is working with Wallin on the project.

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