Most of the 109 mountain goats known as the Himalayan tahrs, which are endangered and indigenous to the Himalayas, have been shot in the cull that began mid-May on Cape Town's Table Mountain.

"We estimate that the operation is 95 percent complete," said David Mabunda, the chief executive of South African National Parks (SANPARKS) on Thursday.

"Given the onset of winter rains SANPARKS will now begin winding down the operations."

The cull is part of a project at Table Mountain National Park to re-establish indigenous plant and animal life on the mountain.

The tahrs compete for the same ecological niche as the klipspringer, a type of buck that is extinct on Table Mountain and which parks officials now want to reintroduce.

The Table Mountain tahrs are relatives of a pair that were brought to a former zoo in Cape Town in 1918.

The tahrs escaped soon after their arrival and headed for the cliffs of Table Mountain.

The pair bred rapidly and at one stage there were up to 400 of them on the mountain, according to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA).

Pro-tahr groups such as the now defunct "Friends of the tahr" have argued that the mountain goats should be sent back to the Himalayas where they are endangered, instead of being shot.

Friends of the tahr launched a high court challenge last year to stop the cull, but the case was dropped in April after park authorities agreed to a reprieve.

The culling however resumed on May 14 with parks officials saying they still felt bound to their original decision taken in 1999 to eradicate the Himalayan tahrs.

The debate intensified and soon local newspapers were filled with letters about tahrs.

On Monday a group of about 50 protesters massed at the foot of Table Mountain to voice their outrage about sharpshooters who are "hunting" tahrs.

Two weeks ago a public briefing on tahrs by conservation officials was postponed after staff members from the parks service said they had received threatening phone calls.

The police confirmed that were investigating death threats against a senior staff member of Table Mountain National Park.

The Scottish-based Marchig Animal Welfare Trust, which had offered to help pay for the animals' capture and release elsewhere, called for an independent investigation into the cull.

The group said it had proposed a non-lethal alternative in which the animals would have been captured and moved to a private reserve.

"The decision to kill and eradicate the tahr, some of the comments made and the activities of SANPARKS in this affair demands that a thorough investigation by an independent authority be carried out," said Marchig managing trustee Les Ward.

Rick Allen, the NSPCA's wildlife manager, said the problem with translocations, is that tahrs live on verges and rocky outcrops.

"Once they are darted, they usually fall to their deaths. It is extremely difficult to capture a tahr alive using traditional methods," he said.

Allen said scientific evidence produced by SANPARKS had shown that tahrs were having a damaging effect on Table Mountain's environment.

"I am not in a position to comment on the validity of SANPARKS' scientific evidence, but from what I have seen on my trips up the mountain is that something is destroying the natural vegetation."

TERRA.WIRE