Welsh Journals

NATURE IN WALES VOL. 11, No. i. MARCH 1968. FERAL GOATS IN WALES C. MILNER, R. GOODIER and IAN G. CROOK The Nature Conservancy, Bangor. INTRODUCTION Although Matheson (1954) drew attention to the presence of herds of 'wild' goats in Wales, it is only recently that attempts have been made to study these animals in detail. The Welsh mountain goats are more correctly termed 'feral' rather than 'wild', a feral animal being one that is living wild but whose ancestors were domesticated. The mountain goats of Wales meet this criterion in that they are descended from domesticated goats but now live completely independent of man. There is little doubt that feral goats have been present on the Welsh mountains for a very long time, possibly ever since goats may have escaped from the domestic herds of the Neolithic settlers in the area, and there are certainly several records of their presence from the middle of the 18th century onwards. The herds would, of course, have been augmented by escapes from the domestic herds that were abundant in Wales up to the middle of the eighteenth century (Roberts 1959). Harris (1962) has concluded that the majority of the world's domestic goats are descended from the Wild Bezoar (Capra hircus aegagrus) of south-west Asia where they were first domesticated in early Neolithic times. The type description by Linnaeus of Capra hircus relates to the domestic goat and its descent from an ancestor of the 'aegagrus' type has been postulated mainly on account of horn structure because, like the Wild Bezoar, the horns of the domestic goat usually have a sharp anterior keel and rise in a vertical plane to arch over the back in a long scimitar-like curve. Other members of the genus Capra include the Markhor (C. falconeri) from the mountains of Asia, the Turs (C. caucasica) from the Caucassus mountains, and the Ibexes which include two species, C. pyrenaica from the Pyrenees and C. ibex from the Alps with sub-species from the Middle East, Ethiopia and Central Asia. All these have a quite different horn structure to that of the aegagrus type found in Capra hircus. DISTRIBUTION Much of the available information relating to the earlier records of feral goats in Wales has been summarised by Matheson and also by Fitter (1959) and Condry (1966). Although feral goats were observed in the Bachwy Ravine, Radnorshire in 1803 (Mathe-