A herd of goats took over a hill above Glendale Community College on Wednesday.
Drivers came to sudden stops on a hillside road as they spotted the creatures, often uncertain about what appeared to be a new grazing location for the 150 animals.
The goats were part of a new, “green” approach to fire prevention and trimming flammable shrubbery, said Dan Padilla, the college’s director of facilities.
“We got the idea that the goats were innovative,” Padilla said. “And they’re returning back to the ground some nutrients from their eating, which we wouldn’t have gotten with a simple clearing project.”
The effort in fire prevention would have cost the college twice as much money with a human crew, said Padilla, who did not want to publicize the agreed cost for the services provided by Environmental Land Management, which gave the college a significant discount.
The company’s charges range from $450 to $1,200 for one acre of work, depending on the number of goats needed and the density of vegetation involved in each project, said Johnny Gonzales, a field operations manager for the company. But for the college they agreed to a set price without acreage in mind, Gonzales said.
“That’s why this is a win-win situation for Glendale [Community] College, because we can’t afford to have that same thing done by a crew, because we don’t have the funds,” Padilla said.
Instead of using machinery, which could leave the land stripped and damaged, the goats will thin out the dense and often dry vegetation around the college over the next 10 days, reducing what could have been a dangerous fire hazard, Gonzales said.
The animals are kept in a half-acre section, surrounded by a low-voltage electrical fence, until they have significantly thinned the plant life in the area, he said.
The hungry creatures, which can eat up to 12 times daily, are then moved into a new fenced area to allow for ground crews to do “confirmation trimming,” Gonzales said.
Workers remove old, dried bark and dead plants, putting the scraps through a wood chipper so that they can be spread over the soil to complete the process, he said.
“When you just scrape it off, you lose the benefits of the nutrients going back in,” he said.
The efforts will make a difference for fire prevention, Verdugo Fire Academy Chief Sam DiGiovanna said.
