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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Environment
Oliver Milman

‘Badasses of the mountains’: goats clash with sheep as key US glaciers melt

A mountain goat moves toward three bighorn rams at a high-elevation snow patch in Glacier national park.
A mountain goat moves toward three bighorn rams at a high-elevation snow patch in Glacier national park. Photograph: Forest P Hayes

In one corner, there is the agile climber with steak knife-like horns. In the other is America’s largest wild sheep. They are locked in significantly one-sided combat in the mountains of the US west, scientists have found, in a battle over resources uncovered by the region’s vanishing glaciers.

In study sites across a 1,500-mile span of the Rocky Mountains, scientists have documented mountain goats and bighorn sheep competing over mineral deposits among the rocks, at elevations of up to 14,000ft.

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