Mountain goat drowns fleeing photographers

WILDLIFE – A mountain goat in Seward, Alaska, jumped into the ocean to get away from crowds snapping its picture and the animal drowned when it couldn’t get back to land because of the crush of people on shore.

Alaska State Troopers say it is imperative to give animals adequate space. That didn’t happen on Saturday in downtown Seward, and troopers say in an online post that it “resulted in a wild animal dying for no cause.”

It comes amid a series of incidents of people getting too close to wildlife, including tourists in Yellowstone National Park who picked up a bison calf they thought was abandoned. It had to be euthanized.

In Alaska, troopers got a call about people harassing the goat and another about a large group following it onto the breakwater rocks.

In a similar, local incident in June, pressure from photo-seekers in northwest Spokane led to a moose being hit by a vehicle and having to be euthanized.