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Goats Expelled From Virgin Islands Park

October 4, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 2:23 p.m. ET

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP) -- Chewing
exotic flowers and common weeds, the indiscriminate eating
habits of free-roaming goats have earned them expulsion
from a U.S. Virgin Islands national park, officials said
Monday.

Goats, left behind by early European explorers for food on
future journeys to the Caribbean, tear through the Virgin
Islands National Park's 737 known species of plants -- some
of which are facing extinction, said Rafe Boulon, the
park's resource management chief.

About 200 goats wander the 7,150-acre national park in St.
John -- a forest island where native species account for 85
percent of plant life -- sometimes leaving behind swaths of
bare ground from their voracious grazing, Boulon said.

Found only in St. John, less than 200 of the bushy yellow
flowered solanum conocarpum are left in the wild, he said.

Last month, the Tucson, Arizona-based Center for
Biological Diversity sued the U.S. government, demanding
the plant receive federal protection.

The goats also eat young mangroves, which grow in shallow
sea water and are vital to fish habitats and preventing
soil erosion, Boulon said.

Goat owners have until Nov. 1 to claim their animals and
move them out of the park before Department of Agriculture
officers start trapping the animals in corals.

Once captured, the goats will be sold or given away.
Officers will likely hunt and shoot those that evade
capture, Boulon said.

Bats are the only mammals native to the U.S. Caribbean
territory of 110,000 residents.

Park officials hope to remove invasive nonnative plants,
such as snakeroot, sweet lime and tam-tam trees, which
compete for space and sunlight with indigenous plants.

``All of the species are under threat from the nonnative
species, which are typically aggressive colonizers. The
native seeds and sprouts simply can't survive,'' Boulon
said.

Removal of the plants and goats is important to prevent the
loss of native species, which has happened in some Hawaiian
forests, where about 85 percent of the plants are invasive
nonnative species, he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/inte...e27638f2b2c18c

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Solid D]

Thanks for the report Marlin Perkins.