A white-coated ungulate that lives on steep North American mountains.
It has a thick white coat, and both sexes have slender black horns. Soft pads beneath the hooves help it climb rock.
As summer temperatures rose, mountain goats across four populations were less likely to select open alpine meadows. From 2010 to 2019, researchers tracked 223 goats with GPS and activity sensors across coastal and continental ecotypes. Both ecotypes reduced activity around midday as temperatures increased, but their habitat choices differed: coastal goats shifted toward areas with snow and ice patches, while continental goats favored forest.
Continental goats selected higher elevations only when it was warm, whereas coastal goats selected higher elevations across temperature levels. The study shows that these mountain specialists use different behavioral strategies in hot conditions, depending on their local environment.
IUCN Red List (as listed by Mammal Diversity Database) · Least Concern (LC) · Global
The mountain goat is listed as Least Concern on the global IUCN Red List. On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, animals introduced in the 1920s increased in number, damaging alpine soils and threatening rare plants. The National Park Service and partner agencies aimed to restore the local ecosystem: from 2018 to 2022 they removed 548 goats, translocating 325 to the Cascades, where the species is native. Since 2023 the project has been in a maintenance phase focused on finding any goats that remain. Five sightings were reported in 2023–2025, one of them confirmed.