Goats increasingly used to prevent wildfire by eating the fuel

Goats at work near Glendale, Calif.
(Getty Images photo by Robyn Beck)

As the risk of wildfire increases, land managers are increasingly turning to goats to eat plants that fuel the fires, Chris Iovenko reports for National Geographic.

"Deploying goats to clear land of vegetation is an age-old practice, but as wildfires worsen worldwide, places as diverse as Greece, Australia, and other parts of the U.S., such as Arizona and Colorado are embracing the herbivores as important tools for wildfire prevention," especially in steep and rocky terrain, Iovenko writes from southern California, a state that lost over 2 million acres to wildfire last year.

“Grazing is the most widespread vegetation management we have in California,” Lynn Huntsinger, professor of rangeland ecology and management at the University of California, Berkeley, told Iovenko.

"Prior to fire seasons in the past, land managers traditionally relied on herbicide and human labor to thin plants and brush to reduce fuel load, the amount of flammable material that can burn in a fire," Iovenko writes. "But access to mountain terrain in southern California can be challenging, and such traditional clearing practices can leave behind seeds that germinate the next year."

“When goats eat the seed, it goes through their digestive tract, and it becomes nonviable. It doesn't grow after it comes out the other end, which is really amazing,” said Alissa Cope, owner of Sage Environmental Group, one of about a dozen goat suppliers in southern California.

"One of the oldest domesticated animals, goats are adventurous and curious eaters with iron-clad stomachs," Iovenko notes. "They can eat plants toxic to other kinds of livestock. They also are hardy and can climb steep hillsides and terrain inaccessible to other animals." But they also need goatherds because “Goats are like an indiscriminate brush cutter; they will chew on any vegetation that they like,” Jutta C. Burger, science program director for the California Invasive Plant Council, told Iovenko.

One of their big targets is black mustard, an invasive plant that "outcompetes native vegetation because it grows profusely and its roots generate biochemicals that stop the seeds of other plants from germinating," Ivenko reports. "Its growing season makes it a particular menace: It thrives in the spring and can grow to eight feet high, only to die and turn to dangerous tinder by early summer."