If the wild goats roaming around the East End of St. John knew what was being planned for them, they’d be kicking up their hooves with joy right now.

As of Friday afternoon, a plan to bring in sharpshooters in the next coming weeks to reduce the goat population has apparently been canceled.

Goats have roamed the hillsides of St. John as long as anyone can remember. Initially, goats were all raised by St. John families, primarily for meat. Over the years, the goats have strayed far beyond their owners’ properties, especially since fences were blown down during major hurricanes in 1989 and 1995.

Upscale villa owners on the East End see the goats as a nuisance, but wildlife biologists see them as something worse — a cause of major environmental destruction. Goat hooves tear up the soil, disturb plant roots and cause erosion on steep hillsides. On the remote East End of St. John, the goats eat whatever they can find, including rare and endangered plant species.

Two years ago, the Division of Fish and Wildlife (within the V.I. Department of Planning and Natural Resources) signed off on a goat culling plan proposed by the Wild Ecology Group headed by Nick Morrison.

According to some homeowners, the project was a success; more than one hundred goats — some say as many as 150 — were killed.

To others, however, the culling operation was a fiasco. “Some goats were wounded and suffered a slow death, and some were killed with a clean shot,” said Karen Granitz, a property owner on the East End. “All were left to die where they fell,” resulting in “rotting carcasses and unbearable stench for weeks,” she added. As a volunteer with local wildlife organizations, she was deeply troubled.

Two weeks ago, Granitz discovered that members of two homeowners’ associations received notification of a new upcoming goat-culling operation. She started a campaign to find an alternative, contacting DPNR officials and posting messages on social media. “I’m not against killing goats,” she said. “I am against leaving them on a hillside and not using them for meat.”

Granitz now plans to call a community meeting to discuss the best way to decrease the population of goats on the St. John’s East End. She thinks it’s feasible to trap them and give them to people who want to use them for food. “People would love to have the meat. I’ve been talking to people who say, ‘Call me first!’” she said.

St. Johnian hunters told Granitz they estimate that 2,000 goats, 1,000 deer, 200 sheep, and 50 donkeys now roam the steep terrain from the Johnny Horn trail to the tip of the East End of St. John.

Hunting goats was common until the 1990s, according to East End resident Sloop Jones. That’s when real estate on the remote East End became desirable, property owners formed homeowners’ associations, and “No Hunting” signs were posted.

Jones said one hunter told him that goats hate to get mud in their hooves, so when it rained, the hunter would head to the rocks on Long Point where the goats became easy targets as they gathered.

Nancy Gold, president of the Hansen Bay Homeowners Association, said property owners in her group supported the culling initiative proposed by the Wild Ecology Group in 2023 and again this year. “This is an important project for this very historical section of the island,” she told the Source.

“There are well over 500 wild goats roaming around defacing the area and causing erosion to the hillsides. Each female has two to three litters a year of two to three goats. This problem cannot be solved by locals trapping,” Gold said. “Furthermore, it is not safe to encourage unlicensed shooting on private lands.”

Granitz agrees that hunting in a residential area is not safe; in 2023, when the goat culling was about to begin, not everyone in the neighborhood was warned, she said. “Some of us went door to door warning neighbors and handing out brightly colored collars for pet goats and dogs.”

Some East End property owners, including those who were not members of a homeowners’ association, said they never heard of the plan, and the results almost led to tragedy.

One resident maintains that on Sept. 5, 2023, a bullet whizzed by as she was out taking a walk on a paved road in the Hansen Bay subdivision.

“I remember it vividly,” she told the Source. “I was on my regular morning walking route. I felt and heard the strangest sound go right by my head. It had a buzz quality to it and I could sense it. Nothing I had ever experienced before but definitely scary. I remember being confused. Should I hide? Should I go home? I decided to stick to my route since I had no clue where a safe place was. I continued up the road that goes past (several) houses when I saw a man come out of the bush with a gun — not the kind of gun I think of as a hunting rifle but more modern,” she said.

“I knew then exactly where the near miss had come from,” she continued. “It was a bullet from a gun. I said something like, ‘You almost hit me.’ His reaction was immediately defensive. He asked me if I lived there and said something about being hired by the community to shoot goats. I later saw him and another man go up a subdivision road in a jeep, so maybe the bullet was from the other man’s gun.

During the conversation, the man with the gun mentioned the name Nancy, so the homeowner texted Hansen Bay Homeowners Association President Nancy Gold, who was off island. The resident also contacted DPNR and filed a police report. A week later, she found two bullet casings in the area.

Gold told the Source that the homeowner’s story has never been substantiated. “There were several witnesses in the area who all verified that the shooting was occurring on the downside of the mountain and could not possibly have ‘whizzed’ by as was claimed,” Gold said.

Gold’s neighbor, Sloop Jones, was alarmed at the possibility of a bullet from a culling operation going astray. “Who is liable if someone gets hurt?” he asked.

It’s not a simple question. Would it be the contractor, Wild Ecology Group? Or would it be the homeowners’ association that gave them permission to hunt goats on private property? Or would it be the Division of Fish and Wildlife within DPNR, which signed off on using a federal grant to fund the operation?

Nicole Angeli, who heads up DPNR’s Division of Fish and Wildlife, explained that the Wild Ecology Group proposed the culling operation on St. John. “We are mandated to protect endangered species, and the proposal from WEG fit into the goals of habitat restoration on St. John,” she told the Source. “When they came to us after several years of work culling goats and removing rats on other cays, it made sense and we funded it.”

“We welcome any group that would like to work on invasive herbivores to approach us with good ideas,” she said. We also fund many other nonprofit and community initiatives — more than 10 each year to do everything from provide backup power at coral reef nurseries, fund wildlife rehab on all three islands, rat eradication on Savana, and create hiking trails, for example. The mission of DFW is to empower and support community groups to work in a place-based manner and create an overall pattern and lifestyle of conservation.”

On July 14, DPNR commissioner Jean-Pierre Oriol announced DPNR is updating its State Wildlife Action Plan as it does every 10 years and invited the public to review it and provide feedback. Readers can access the site here.

In fact, the East End of St. John is a critical habitat for the endangered plant Solanum canocarpum, locally known as Marron Bacora. “It federally listed,” said Clare Weaver, a field botanist and researcher with the Virgin Islands Rare Plant Initiative. “It’s absolutely beautiful, member of the eggplant family, and it does bear fruits, with seeds, so it’s easy to grow. It was thought that there were only a few on St. John.”

Weaver said that she also works with another rare plant, Machaonia woodburyana, a plant with scented white flowers. Homeowners within the Privateer Bay development are advised to survey their property before building a home to avoid disturbing the plant’s habitat, she said.

No one interviewed for this story expects that goats will be eradicated on St. John. Virtually everyone said goats should be treated humanely, and once captured, the meat should be shared with those who want it. And as one resident said, “If you don’t want goats in your yard, build a fence.”