page_title: Goat River (Fraser River tributary)
section_title: Ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Goat River (Fraser River tributary) / Ecology
caption_attribution_description: English: Old growth Interior Cedar-Hemlock forest, Goat River valley, BC
context_page_description: The Goat River is a tributary of the Fraser River in British Columbia, Canada. Starting in the northern reaches of the Cariboo Mountains, it flows eastward and northeastward to join the Fraser near the settlement of Crescent Spur in the Robson Valley. Including its main tributary, the Milk River, its watershed covers 66,468 hectares. Other major tributaries for the river include McLeod, North Star, Whitehorse, Quartz, Diggings and Kendall creeks.
context_section_description: The river has clear and relatively cold waters, reaching a maximum yearly temperature of about 8 °C (46 °F). It supports populations of bull trout and chinook salmon, both of which use the river's gravel beds as spawning sites.  It also supports mountain whitefish. The Milk River is glacially fed and contributes amounts of rock flour and sediment to the lower Goat.  However, above its confluence with the Milk, the upper Goat River is not glacially fed and has exceptionally clear waters.
  The Goat watershed contains habitat for several large mammal species, including grizzly bears, mountain goats, wolverines and wolves. Caribou migrate through the area, and can be found in high concentrations in several of the tributary drainages, notably McLeod Creek.
  The Goat River and adjacent valleys are covered by predominantly coniferous forests, falling into four of British Columbia's biogeoclimatic zones.  In the lower river valley, the wet interior cedar-hemlock zone dominates, with old-growth stands of large western red cedar present.  The Engellmann spruce-subalpine fir zone covers much of the rest of the drainage.  Deciduous stands are present along the river's edge.  The dominant ground cover in the valley is devil's club.
  The lower Goat and Milk River watersheds have seen some disturbance through human activities, mostly mining and logging.  A logging road follows the lower river then continues into the Milk drainage.  The upper river, however, is almost completely undisturbed and contains the second largest tract of unprotected old-growth forest in the Robson Valley region,  after the Raush River watershed to the south.
caption: Old growth Interior Cedar-Hemlock forest in the Goat River valley
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