They’re baaaaack: a natural answer to invasive species
The goats are back in Calgary, and despite the heat warning they’re already hard at work. And for the first time, they’ve made their way into the middle of the city.
The herd of 130 goats from a ranch in Wycliff, B.C., will spend the next 17 days grazing on invasive species at McHugh Bluff Park along Memorial Drive, as an environmentally friendly way to control weeds and prepare the site for seeds.
“We’re trying to reintroduce native plant cover and native plant communities in our parks to make them a little more diverse over time and a little less maintenance intensive ,” said Chris M anderson, urban conservation lead for Calgary Parks.
“The goats are kind of the first wave. They’re going to come in and graze out some of the weeds for us and help get the site prepared for renaturalizing.”
Manderson said the McHugh Bluff area was chosen in part because there was already a naturalization project in the works and also because the community seemed eager to welcome the goats.
“I’m also kind of interested to see how it works in an inner-city park,” he said. “This is a pretty busy place and this will give us a little more insight into the logistics of keeping goats overnight, dealing with crowds, all those sorts of things.”
The concept of goat-controlled weeds isn’t new to Calgary. Goats have been used as part of a pilot project in Confluence Park since 2016.
Manderson said until last summer, a land-use bylaw prevented any grazing in the city, so the pilot was set up in Confluence Park because the area was classified as agricultural land.
Now with the bylaw amended, the hope is more goat grazing can happen in parks throughout the city. The Confluence Park project will also continue this summer as a way to measure the program’s progress.
“We want to get a better assessment of how effective they are, like how much are they knocking back weeds? How effective is one, two, three years of grazing?” Manderson said. “So we decided to continue that work just so we’d have some good data.”
But the goats, which will graze for about 10 hours a day, won’t be able to fully restore McHugh Bluff on their own. The entire naturalization project is expected to take two or three years.
“This is a really good way to start weed control without relying on herbicides,” Manderson said. “(Herbicide) is kind of our established tool for weed control in a lot of areas and it works, it’s relatively economical, but it’s not something that we want to spray if we can avoid it.”
He estimates the cost of using the goats is about the same as spraying herbicides, but the added benefits on the environment make the former option worthwhile.
According to shepherd Cailey Chase, the goats have been wellreceived by the public and are happily adapting to the city.
“I was freaking out just a little bit when we got here because it was so downtown,” Chase said. “But the goats are so calm they know what they’re doing. They came here to eat weeds and that’s what they’re doing.
“We ended up with 30 people to help us graze for the first time on (Sunday) night, and that’s the whole element that brings it all together. The goats get people back to the land.”
The city will host an event Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at McHugh Bluff, allowing people to meet the goats and learn more about the project.