St. John USVI News

Goats Expelled From Virgin Islands Park
October 4, 2004

St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands - 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.

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.

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.