Recently when Glacier Park biologist Mark Biel got up to the Logan Pass parking lot with his trained collie, there was a bighorn ram and ewe in the parking lot, too close to visitors.

Biel and Gracie approached the animals and they scooted off to higher terrain in Glacier National Park.

The next day, there were five bighorn rams in the parking lot. Biel and Gracie approached again and they, too, went off to higher terrain on the slopes of Mount Pollock.

“I didn’t even have to take her off the leash,” Biel said.

At Logan Pass, animals such as mountain goats and bighorn sheep have long been attracted to the parking lot because of salt that drips off of vehicles onto the roadway.

In the past rangers have used shotguns with non-lethal loads, sirens and even whips to shoo the critters away since they often come too close to people as they’re drawn to the salt.

Biel knew that other national parks were using trained dogs to manage wildlife. A dog is used to keep ducks and geese out of the reflecting pond at the National Mall. Dogs have been used successfully in Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada to keep deer out of the town site.

After getting approval from National Park Service administration, Biel decided to see if a dog could be trained to herd goats and sheep out of the Logan Pass parking lot. With just under $6,000 in funding from the Glacier National Park Conservancy, Biel sent Gracie this spring to the Wind River Bear Institute in Missoula, where she was trained to herd domestic sheep. Biel also was trained with Gracie as well.

Two weeks ago, she was used for the first time at Logan Pass.

Gracie is trained to be used off a leash. She knows a basic set of commands that tell her to go right or left, but the most important command tells her when to stop and return.

“She won’t make contact with wildlife,” Biel noted during a demonstration last week in Glacier. “We’ve called her off a dead run.”

Critics have maintained that the problem with the goats and sheep at Logan Pass is a people problem, not an animal one.

Biel agrees it is a people problem.

“I’ve seen people feed them,” he said. “I’ve seen people pet them.”

But having said that, he also notes that the Park Service doesn’t have the funding to patrol the parking lot all the time. The dog also is more visitor-friendly than a ranger with a shotgun.

Biel said he hopes to get up to the pass at least once and possibly twice a week.

For the time being, the plan is to just use the dog at the parking lot, but if it proves successful, it could be expanded to trails like the Hidden Lake Overlook, where people getting too close to goats is commonplace.

The idea isn’t to chase the animals a mile away. It’s to get them to move 25 yards away. People can still watch them, but at a safer distance, Biel noted.

Conservancy board member Tom Bannigan and his family, wife, Louise, daughter Caitlin Weber and her husband, Andrew, sons Thomas Bannigan Jr. and Brendan Bannigan and his wife Kristin all pitched in to fund Gracie’s training.

“We’re all dog lovers and fans of Glacier,” said Tom Bannigan.