Besieged by Fans : Celebrated Wild Goats Hit Castaic: No Kidding

When the truck full of wild goats pulled up to the Los Angeles County Animal Care and Safety Shelter in Castaic Thursday afternoon, a crowd was waiting to greet the animals: county officials, animal experts, volunteers and an assortment of cameramen.

“These are definitely the most famous goats we have ever handled here,” said Martin Broad, a district supervisor with the county’s Department of Animal Care and Safety. “We’ve had bears, mountain lions, cougars, raccoons, even skunks . . . but we’ve never had anything like this.”

Broad was only half joking. The 97 goats inside the cattle truck recently had been targeted for death by the U.S. Navy, praised by prominent conservationists, captured by men in helicopters, loaded into trucks and shipped across the ocean on a barge.

Arrived by Barge

The goats trucked to Castaic were among 200 of the animals removed from San Clemente Island this week. After the highly publicized debate over their fate and rescue operation, they arrived by Navy supply barge at the North Island Air Station on Coronado near dawn on Thursday for resettlement on the mainland.

By Thursday morning, 103 of the goats were at the Animal Trust Sanctuary in the San Diego County community of Ramona, while the rest were being moved to the Castaic shelter in the Santa Clarita Valley, near the northwestern edge of Los Angeles County.

Officials hope that they will soon move to permanent homes.

The goats had been scheduled for execution by Navy marksmen because they were believed to be destroying the habitats of island plants, birds and animals that are on the national list of endangered species.

The goats on the island, thought to be descendants of a small herd of Andalusian goats put on the island as many as 200 years ago to provide food for passing sailors, once numbered almost 30,000, according to Navy biologists.

Since the early 1970s, however, all but the 1,200 to 1,500 now on the island had been shot or trapped by hunters. The Navy has shipped 15,000 of the animals off of the island, and the Fund for Animals, an international conservation group, removed about 1,000 in 1973 and 1974.

But because of their ability to reproduce rapidly, the goat population again became troublesome and the Navy planned a goat-shoot last month. The Fund for Animals, however, won approval from Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger for one more trapping effort, which is now under way. Author Cleveland Amory, who heads the group, hopes to save 800 of the doomed animals before his allotted time runs out during the first week of March.

Using helicopters, members of the volunteer group trapped the goats with nets, tied them up and loaded them into trucks, and then onto barges. By early Thursday morning, the barges had been unloaded in San Diego.

After a four-hour drive, the second truck arrived at its destination, the animal shelter in Castaic. A pair of 4-foot-high fences had been extended 2 feet higher to prevent the goats from leaping to freedom. Other pens at the 6-acre rural site contain a variety of animals, ranging from impounded dogs to stolen horses recovered by police.

The goats were to be stored in specially prepared pens stocked with a ton of hay purchased by the Fund for Animals. A veterinarian stood by with an air-powered dart gun loaded with tranquilizers that could be used in the event of trouble.

Shortly after the 11-foot-wide cattle truck arrived, county officials discovered that the gateway leading to the pens was only 9 feet wide. The truck finally was squeezed through a garage in front of the pens, pushed around a sharp corner with the help of a local tractor and parked about 10 feet from the gate.

The animals then were released.

Most bounded through a makeshift corridor leading from the truck into the pens. Some county workers held garbage can lids in front of themselves to guide the animals, while others climbed into the truck to help coax the last of the goats outside.

Officials with the Fund for Animals said they will begin selling the wild goats this weekend, and if all the goats are not claimed by Sunday evening, the sale will resume next weekend.

The animals, which have been vaccinated for tetanus, appear to be “in excellent condition,” said Paula Van Orden, a representative of the group.

Male goats are being sold for $25 and females for $35. Officials said that because the goats are herd animals, they would like each customer to take home at least two.