Goat Trapping to Start First Week of February

A trapping operation to capture hundreds of wild goats on Navy-owned San Clemente Island is expected to begin during the first week of February, a spokeswoman for an animal rights group said Monday.

Donna Gregory, representative of the international Fund for Animals, said the goal is to take at least 800 of the island’s goat population, estimated at 1,500, back to the mainland and put them up for adoption.

The goats were saved three weeks ago when Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weingberger arranged an 11th-hour reprieve of a Navy plan to shoot them.

Gregory said a rescue team headed by Bill Hales, of New Zealand, will use a helicopter to hover over the goats and fire a net to snare as many as five goats at a time.

Attempts to remove all the goats from the island, about 60 miles off San Diego, began several years ago when Navy biologists said the animals were destroying the habitats of several plants and animals considered endangered species.

At various times, hunters have killed hundreds of the goats, and in 1983 and 1984, the New York-based Fund for Animals--one of several groups opposing the slaughter--managed to capture a few hundred of them.

But the goats reproduce rapidly, and, earlier this year, the Navy, which uses the island for most of the year for bombing and shelling practice, announced that the surviving animals would be shot from a low-flying helicopter. The Navy cited the U.S. Environmental Protection Act of 1973, which requires preservation of the endangered species.

After another organization, Animal Lovers Volunteer Assn. of Los Alamitos, was unable to get a court order against the killing, Rep. Bobbi Fiedler (R-Chatsworth) appealed to Weinberger, and he agreed to delay the shooting, at least through February.

Ken Mitchell, spokesman for the Navy, said Monday it has not yet been determined yet if the remaining animals will be shot after the trapping effort.

Trapping Area Widened

Under the agreement with Fund for Animals, Mitchell said the Navy has widened by several square miles the area in which the aerial trapping operation can be carried out, extending it to almost all the eastern portion of the 51-square-mile island, and to other portions near the southern end, where most of the goats are believed to live.

Mitchell added that the Navy will pay between $45,000 and $50,000 rent for the civilian-owned helicopter.

Gregory said Fund for Animals will pay for the trapping team and other related expenses but could not estimate the cost.

She said it is hoped that the first barge-load of goats can be brought back to San Diego about Feb. 13, with at least three other shipments to follow before the program ends on March 4.

The animals, believed to be descendants of Andalusian goats left on the island as long as 200 years ago as food for passing sailors, will be taken to four facilities in California to await adoption. Gregory said pens have been set up in San Diego, Chino, Turlock and in Cool, a small community northeast of Sacramento.

Persons who wish to adopt a goat, at $35 for females and $25 for males, may telephone the Chino site at (714) 628-1980, she said.