550 More Goats Saved; Navy May Kill Others

The latest attempt by an animal rights group to rescue a herd of wild goats on San Clemente Island ended Friday with 550 of the creatures rounded up but with no final decision on the fate of those remaining.

Early this year the U.S. Navy, which owns the island about 60 miles west of San Diego and uses it most of the year for shelling and bombing practice, had planned to shoot the goats. Their reason was that biologists said the goats were destroying the habitats of several species of wildlife that appear on federal endangered species lists.

The slaughter was put off when Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger intervened on behalf of the Fund for Animals, which proposed to save as many of the goats as possible by capturing them in nets dropped from a helicopter.

During late February and early March, according to the fund’s president, Cleveland Amory, 870 animals were caught and taken to the mainland, where they were offered for adoption by private citizens.

The Navy allowed the rescue effort to resume July 5 through Friday, and Amory said that with the capture of 550 more animals, the herd on the island has been reduced to between 100 and 300.

Food for Sailors

The goats, descendants of animals put on the island about 200 years ago by seamen to provide food for crews of passing vessels, at one time numbered more than 20,000.

The goats multiplied rapidly, and as they nibbled away at the undergrowth, they threatened the well-being of certain birds, lizards and plants protected by the federal Endangered Species Act, so the Navy was required to take steps to exterminate them.

Amory said he would propose within the next few days that his group be allowed to return to the island next winter to get as many more as possible.

Navy spokesman Ken Mitchell said, however, that ordinarily the island is “cold” (not under fire) only during July of each year and that permitting the fund to capture goats last February was “a unique situation” because of Weinberger’s action.

“The Navy will take a census of the goats next Wednesday,” Mitchell said. “After that, we expect to make a decision on whether to carry out our earlier plan to shoot them.”