Evidence that mountain goats are a native species includes the following facts:

An early report by John Dunn, published in 1844, stated that "The natives [of the area] manufacture some of their blankets from the wool of the wild goat; which is done with great neatness."

John Fannin and George Bird Grinnell reported in the February 13, 1890 edition of Forest and Stream in an article entitled "Range of the White Goat" that mountain goats were "abundant on the Olympian Range mountains."

A press expedition reported, in the July 16, 1890 edition of the Seattle Press, the sighting of a lone goat in the Olympic mountains.

Another expedition (reported in the April 1896 National Geographic) claimed that mountain goats were present.

In the July 18, 1917 edition of the Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, Albert B. Reagan, Ph.D. (an ethnologist), reported identifying bones of mountain goats in the area. Most, but not all, of the goat bones had been formed into spoons.

These reports--all written before the release of a few goats in the 1920's--are substantial evidence that mountain goats are native to the ONP and an important part of the local ecology.