Technology is not always the answer.
Rather than use heavy machinery to cut huge swaths of land down to the bare earth, a couple in Alberta, Canada have spent two decades renting out their herd of goats. Heavy machinery is almost as disruptive and dangerous to the animals that live on land as a fire itself, destroying nests and burrows and frequently grinding up animals unable to escape in time. Goats, on the other hand, just eat around the critters and leave burrows and nests in place.
Pesticides to kill off invasive species of plants do the same deadly damage to the native fauna as well as invasive flora. Grazing animals eat poisoned plants. predators eat poisoned grazers. Both types of animals get coated with the poisons as they wander through their home territories and then injest the herbicides when they groom themselves. Goats…well goats may annoy the natural fauna but they aren’t deadly, and goats can be directed to eat only the invasive plants while leaving the natural plants alone.
Goats also have the advantage of producing milk as a by product of all this munching, so it seems like an obvious win-win situation. Fire reduction, natural flora protection, happy and healthy critters who live in the area, and Chevre cheese. Why are we not using goats as the standard go-to more often?
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Alberta couple spent decades using their goats for fire mitigation, invasive species in B.C.
