Tragic turn for “Bob”, the popular Texas mountain goat

A free-roaming mountain goat known as “Bob” to hikers and locals in the El Paso area died after being caught up in a botched relocation operation.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wanted to relocate the free-spirited goat from its home in the Franklin Mountains to a nearby farm to prevent disease and prepare for the upcoming release of desert bighorn sheep.

Initially, several attempts by wildlife officials to capture him failed, but over the course of the summer, Bob managed to escape capture.

But he never made it to his new home.

On August 13, wildlife officials decided to change the trapping method and caught the goat with a lasso.

Although lassoing animals is a common practice in the livestock industry, it ultimately led to Bob's death.

Bob's death was “an unfortunate and unintended consequence of the relocation efforts,” KTSM reported. The wildlife agency described him as “

The white and brown longhorn goat had lived out his twilight years, grazing on trees and grasses in the wild, but he may not have many years left.

He was at least nine years old, but probably much older. The life expectancy of free-range domestic goats is usually 10 to 13 years.

Froylán Hernández, director of the Desert Bighorn Sheep Program of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Service, said, according to El Paso Matters, that after the goat's untimely death, staff collected tissue samples from it to better understand the exact cause of death.

The team also wanted to determine whether bacteria that cause contagious and fatal pneumonia in bighorn sheep were present in the Franklin Mountains.

But the nine-year-old goat was an important part of the lives of many Texas nature lovers, and her death is a reminder that she will no longer visit locals on their walks or drives in the mountains.

When the El Paso Times posted about his death on Facebook, many users expressed dismay and anger at the way his arrest was handled.

One user commented: “So sad, I always looked forward to seeing him ride the Transmountain Road every day,” accompanied by sad emojis.

In 2015, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department identified Bob as a feral domestic goat. It is believed that he likely escaped from a farm or was intentionally released from a farm.

Initially, there was no intention to relocate Bob as this would have been difficult and dangerous for both the animal and the wildlife conservationists.

However, plans changed after the agency announced its new summer plans – reintroducing desert bighorn sheep to the Franklin Mountains.

Bighorn sheep were nearly wiped out after disease and overhunting devastated the species. The project to reintroduce them to the mountains is part of a decades-long effort to return the sheep to their historic mountain ranges in West Texas.

The bighorn sheep are vulnerable to a bacterium called Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae, or M. ovi, which is transmitted by wild and domesticated sheep and goats and poses a deadly threat to desert bighorn sheep, Hernández added.

They concluded that Bob posed too great a threat and that his continued presence would have jeopardized the successful establishment of desert bighorn sheep in the mountains.