A beloved goat that once roamed the Franklin Mountains has died, and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department officials say the cause may have been stress.
The animal, affectionately known to El Paso residents as “Bob the Goat,” was captured by TPWD workers on Aug. 13 and transported to a local farm.
Crews were able to capture Bob with a rope, but he died during the removal operation, TPWD said in a statement.
Franklin Mountains State Park Superintendent Cesar Mendez told El Paso Matters that he believes Bob’s death was the result of a combination of factors, including the stress of the relocation effort, declining health due to old age and possibly malnutrition.
According to TPWD, Bob was believed to be at least 9 years old, but was likely significantly older than that — sheep and goats kept in free-range conditions typically live 10 to 13 years.
The decision to move the domesticated, exotic goats was made to minimize the risk of disease, as TPWD prepares to reintroduce desert bighorn sheep, a historically native species, to the Franklin Mountains in October.
The risk agent is Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae (M. ovi), which is highly contagious among domestic and wild goats and sheep, and its impact on bighorn sheep in the Texas desert has been devastating, TPWD said.
Because M. ovi is one of the biggest challenges to successfully reintroducing desert bighorn sheep to the Franklin Mountains, officials planned to relocate Bob to a different location to limit exposure and transmission of the disease.
“The death of goat ‘Bob’ was an unfortunate and unexpected outcome of our relocation efforts,” Froilan Hernandez, TPWD desert bighorn sheep program leader, said in a news release. “Staff took the opportunity to collect tissue samples to better understand the cause of death and to determine if Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae, a deadly bacterium that causes infectious pneumonia in bighorn sheep, was present in the Franklin Mountains.”
The Franklin Mountains are a small mountain range about 23 miles long and 3 miles wide that stretch from El Paso north into New Mexico. The range is part of the Chihuahuan Desert. Most of the range is part of Franklin Mountains State Park, one of the largest urban parks in the United States.
