600 hungry goats eat weeds to mitigate fire risk at Bear Creek Garden
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) - For the 23rd year, hundreds of hungry goats have arrived at Bear Creek Garden in Colorado Springs this week, ready to get to work eating noxious weeds and grass.
The goats were brought in on a truck from Aspen on Tuesday and will be grazing 20 acres around the garden for 10 days. The effort is a two-decade-long partnership between the Bear Creek Garden Association and Goat Green, LLC., which manages the herd.
"We're an organic garden, and if we don't control the weeds organically and the goats are wonderful, sustainable way to do it, the county is legally bound to come in with chemical herbicides and control those noxious weeds," said Todd Hegert of the Bear Creek Garden Association. "So we want to protect our status as an organic garden and just contribute to the sustainability of the park in general, too."
The herder and owner of the goats, Lani Malmberg, says the most important part of their work is fire mitigation.
"The goats are eating the fire fuel load and recycling it to basic nutrients that is going back into the soil," said Malmberg. "Six-hundred goats is 2,400 hooves that are massaging this land and working that back into the soil. What is so critical now in our extended drought and dry period is to hold the water in the system, in the soil, and what does that is organic matter."
This yearly visit from the goats costs $10,000 a year, which Malmberg says is actually about half the price of what she usually charges. That's because of her long-standing relationship with the park and the Bear Creek Garden Association. The money is raised by the association through community donations.
"I've been coming here since 1999, and this is a labor of love for us," said Malmberg. "We work here for about half price of what our normal price is to make sure that we can all keep this up.”
Everyone in the community is encouraged to come and check out the goats until they leave around Christmas. However, if you bring your dogs they must be on a leash. You also should avoid the fence, as it is electric.
