Goats on the Foliage Front Line | Voice of America - English
oats are one of the oldest domesticated species. For thousands of years, they've been used for their meat, milk and hair. They've even pulled carts.
Chattanoogacity officials have hired some rather unusual workers for the area's mostdifficult landscaping jobs. Winter,Pita, Indiana and Lily are goats? and they are in charge of clearing aninvasive plant known as kudzu from a park on Lookout Mountain.Surrounded by an electric fence and guardedby a Great Pyrenees watch dog named Goliath, they will be hard at work for amonth? about all the time it will take them to clear half a hectare. Thegoats belong to , owned by Steve Surowitz and his wifeMarci. The company's herd contains about 100 animals, most of which arefainting goats. This species has a genetic disorder that causes their musclesto freeze for a few seconds when they're startled, so they fall down. Surowitzexplains that makes them better for a land clearing operation. "They don'tchallenge the fence, they don't run away and if they do, you just clap yourhands and they faint," he says with a laugh. Likemuch of the South, Chattanooga suffers from near strangulation by kudzu. TheAsian vine was brought to the United States more than a century ago, and widelypromoted as an effective way to reduce soil erosion. But it was effective; it can grow up to 36 centimeters a day, quickly blanketingeverything from telephone poles and houses to hillsides and trees. It becameknown as 'the plant that ate the South' and was declared a pest plant in 1953.Millions of dollars are still spent each year to try to control it. DonnaHertlein is executive director of the Lookout Mountain Conservancy, which hiredthe goats to clear the park. She says in the battle against kudzu, they needevery tool in their arsenal to win. She explains that controlling it is anenormous challenge. "It is enormously expensive to try to rid an area ofkudzu, which is one of the reasons why it continues to eat the south.Ridding an area of it is cost prohibitivefor a lot of folks." Themodern practice of using goats to clear land first gained popularity out West,in places like California, where dry brush commonly fuels wildfires. Goats,which eat almost anything, especially like brush and shrubs, but a taller plantdoesn't faze them. Steve Surowitz says although kudzu can climb to severalmeters in height, the goats do a surprisingly good job of pulling it down."They'll stand on their hind legs and eat up to [2 meters] tall.So goats naturally do this. What they don'tlike, they won't eat. It's as simple as that. If they know it's poisonous, theywon't eat it." Surowitzadmits that if they know it's good to eat, they will try to eat it, and this isone of the drawbacks to using goats. "If you've got a tree or something tothat effect that you want to protect, you better have a three foot barrieraround it, otherwise a goat will stick its head through, push it over, lean onit, whatever it can to get to the greens on the tree!" Goatscan't do the job all by themselves. Once they clear away the vines, Surowitzsays it's time for the humans to step in. "If you don't have a plan inplace for when they're done, what they've done will get wasted away again andit will turn right back in to what it was," he stresses. "So thegoats are in no way a permanent repair."With the ground cover gone, it becomes much easier to identify thekudzu's root crown system and attack it directly with chemicals so it can'tre-grow. Goatshave been so successful in helping Chattanooga control its pest plant problem,the city held a Goat Browsing Academy last year to train local residents tocare for land-clearing goats of their own. Donna Hertlein explains it was ahands-on workshop that covered the basics of goat management. "Since theyestablished that ? you can get goats through [the folks who have gone throughthe Goat Browsing Academy] to help you with your exotic pest plantissues." Winter,Pita, Indiana and Lily, along with the goats that havegraduated from theBrowsing Academy, have been used not only for city and land trusts, but also atprivate homes around central Tennessee. TheSurowitz's plan to start using larger herds to clear areas in less time. Theyalso hope to get their goats onto some military bases in the South, which arealso losing the battle with kudzu.