Alpine Ibex
The Alpine ibex is a wild goat of the European Alps, at home on steep rocky slopes and grassy ledges from about 700 to more than 3,000 meters above sea level. Males are big and stocky, with heavy, knobbed horns that curve back in a wide arc and can reach about one meter, used in loud clashes during the winter rut. Females are much smaller, with short horns, and live with their kids in separate herds for most of the year. Split hooves with hard rims and soft, grippy pads let the ibex walk across cliffs, and even up the near vertical wall of a dam, to lick salt. By the early nineteenth century hunting had left fewer than 100 animals, all in what is now Gran Paradiso National Park in Italy. Royal protection saved them, and from 1906 ibexes taken from that herd were bred in Switzerland and released across the Alps. Every Alpine ibex alive today descends from those few survivors. The IUCN lists the species as Least Concern, with about 53,000 mature animals in some 180 colonies in Italy, Switzerland, France, Austria, Germany and Slovenia.
What is an Alpine ibex? The wild goat of the Alps
The Alpine ibex is a wild goat, Capra ibex, a member of the same genus as the domestic goat. Each Alpine country has its own name for it: steinbock in German, bouquetin in French, stambecco in Italian and kozorog in Slovene. In English it is sometimes called a mountain ibex or simply a mountain goat, but it should not be confused with the mountain goat of North America, a white animal from the Rockies that belongs to a different genus and is not a true goat. The Alpine ibex is one of several ibexes. Its closest look alikes in Europe are the Iberian ibex of Spain and Portugal, a separate species, and the Nubian ibex of the deserts around the Red Sea, which was long treated as a subspecies of the Alpine ibex until DNA studies suggested it is a different and fairly distant branch. Because it is so close to the domestic goat, the Alpine ibex can still breed with it, and hybrids have turned up in places where goats graze freely on ibex ranges. Today it is one of the best known animals of the Alps and a common sight for hikers above the tree line, but two centuries ago it had almost vanished.
How big is an Alpine ibex? Size, weight and horns
The Alpine ibex is a sturdy, powerful goat, and males are far bigger than females. An adult male stands about 90 to 101 centimeters at the shoulder, measures roughly 1.5 to 1.7 meters from nose to tail and weighs 67 to 117 kilograms, with the heaviest animals in autumn, after a summer of feeding. Females stand about 73 to 84 centimeters and weigh roughly 25 to 35 kilograms, less than half the weight of a big male. The horns are the ibex's trademark. In males they are thick and heavy, curve back over the body in a wide arc and carry a row of raised knobs along the front. They usually measure 69 to 98 centimeters and can reach about one meter in old males. Horns never stop growing: each winter growth slows and leaves a ring, so the age of an ibex can be read by counting them. A long term study in Gran Paradiso found that big horns do not seem to shorten a male's life for most of his years. Females carry short, thin horns of about 18 to 35 centimeters. The coat is gray brown, darker in winter and in males, and old males can look almost black in the cold months.
Where do Alpine ibex live?
The Alpine ibex lives only in the Alps, on steep rocky slopes, cliffs and the grassy ledges between them. The IUCN gives a range of roughly 700 to 3,300 meters above sea level, and the animals move up and down with the seasons. In spring they come down to lower slopes, sometimes below the tree line, to eat the first green grass. In summer they climb high, close to glaciers and ridges, where it is cooler and there are fewer flies. In winter they stay on steep, south facing slopes where the wind and sun clear the snow and leave plants exposed. The species is native to Italy, where the last wild herd survived, and was brought back to Switzerland, France, Austria and Germany, and introduced to Slovenia. In all, the IUCN counts around 180 colonies across the range. Switzerland and Italy have the largest numbers, with well known herds in Graubünden, Valais and the Bernese Oberland, in Gran Paradiso and in the Stelvio area. France holds important herds in the Vanoise, Austria in the Hohe Tauern, Germany in the Bavarian Alps around Berchtesgaden and the Allgäu, and Slovenia in the Julian Alps and the Kamnik Savinja Alps.
What do Alpine ibex eat?
The Alpine ibex is a grazer that feeds mostly on grasses, together with alpine herbs, sedges and flowers. In summer, when the high meadows are green, it eats well and builds the fat reserves it will need for the cold months, and a big male can gain a lot of weight between June and October. In winter food is scarce. Deep snow covers most plants, so ibexes stay on steep, sunny slopes where the snow slides off or blows away, and they eat dry grass, the twigs and leaves of shrubs, mosses and lichens. They save energy by moving as little as possible and lying in the sun on cold mornings. Spring is a critical time: the first new grass appears on low slopes, and ibexes come down, sometimes close to villages and roads, to feed on it after months of poor food. Like other ruminants, they chew the cud, bringing food back up from the stomach to chew it again. Salt is another need. Alpine plants are low in sodium, so ibexes look for natural salt licks and minerals in rocks, and in some places they lick salt from human structures, from road salt to the concrete walls of dams.
How do Alpine ibex climb? The ibexes of the Cingino Dam
Few animals climb like an Alpine ibex. Its hooves are split in two, and each half has a hard outer rim that catches on tiny ledges and cracks and a soft, elastic pad underneath that grips rock almost like rubber. The two halves can spread to give more contact on a narrow foothold. Short, muscular legs, a low center of gravity and a superb sense of balance do the rest, and an ibex can stand on a ledge only a few centimeters wide or jump across a gap without hesitation. The most famous example is the Cingino Dam, a wall about 50 meters high in the Antrona valley of Piedmont, in northern Italy. Ibexes, mostly females and their kids, climb its almost vertical face and walk along the stone to lick salts and minerals from it, and photos and videos of them on the wall have been seen by many millions of people. Climbing is also the ibex's main defense. When a wolf or a person comes too close, ibexes do not run across open ground but head for the steepest rock nearby, where no predator can follow. Kids learn to climb within days of birth, following their mothers across slopes that would stop a mountaineer.
How Alpine ibex live: herds, the winter rut and kids
For most of the year, Alpine ibex live in groups split by sex. Females, kids and young animals form herds that use the steepest and safest terrain, while males gather in bachelor groups that can be quite large in summer. Within these groups, males sort out rank with short sparring matches, and older males with bigger horns usually come out on top. The two sexes meet in the rut, which takes place in the middle of winter, in December and January. Males follow the females, rear up on their hind legs and crash their horns together, and the sound can carry across a valley. Most fights are brief and serious injuries are rare, but the rut leaves males thin just as the hardest part of winter begins. After a pregnancy of about five and a half months, females give birth in late May or June, usually to a single kid and sometimes to twins, on secluded rocky spots. Kids can walk within hours and soon join nursery groups. Wolves and lynx hunt ibexes, and golden eagles take young kids, but in many areas avalanches, hard winters and old age kill more ibexes than predators do. In the wild they can live up to about 15 to 20 years, and females usually outlive males.
How the Alpine ibex came back from near extinction
The Alpine ibex nearly disappeared because people believed it could cure almost anything. Its blood, horns, hair and even the small bone cross in its heart were sold as remedies, and the animal was hunted so hard that it was gone from Graubünden by around 1650, and the last ibex in Switzerland was shot in Valais in 1809. By the early nineteenth century fewer than 100 survived, all in the Gran Paradiso massif in northwestern Italy. They were saved by the very people who wanted to hunt them: in 1856 King Victor Emmanuel II made the area a royal hunting reserve with its own guards, and in 1922 it became Gran Paradiso National Park, Italy's first. Switzerland wanted its ibex back, but Italy would not sell any. In 1906 a poacher smuggled ibex kids across the border, and the Peter and Paul wildlife park in St. Gallen began breeding them. The first releases into the wild came in 1911, and Swiss animals later restocked the rest of the Alps. The comeback has a cost: since every Alpine ibex descends from a few dozen survivors, the species has very low genetic diversity, which may make it more vulnerable to disease.
Is the Alpine ibex endangered?
No. The Alpine ibex is one of the great success stories of European conservation, and the IUCN lists it as Least Concern in its 2020 global assessment, with about 53,000 mature animals in around 180 colonies and a stable trend. A 2015 study estimated some 55,000 ibexes in the Alps, with numbers rising in Switzerland and Italy and steady in France. The species still faces real problems. Its very low genetic diversity, the price of starting again from a few dozen animals, may make it more exposed to disease. Outbreaks of mange, eye infections and brucellosis have hit some herds, and in France a brucellosis outbreak found in 2012 in the Bargy massif of Haute Savoie led to culls and a long conflict with cattle farmers. Climate change is another worry. In Gran Paradiso, the herd that saved the species grew to almost 5,000 animals in 1993 and has fallen to about 2,700 since, and researchers suspect that earlier springs mean kids are born after the best grass has passed. Most countries protect the ibex fully, while Switzerland has allowed controlled hunting since 1977 to keep herds in balance with their habitat. In Slovenia, where it is legally treated as introduced, scientists are debating whether to recognize it as native.
