Big Rock Mesa community and County Fire Department deploy the newest weapon in the ongoing fight against wildfires: the goat.
By Courtney Hong
Staff Writer
Here’s something to gnaw on: kids are an effective antidote to brushfires.
Kids of the goat sort, that is.
In an effort to reduce the intensity and frequency of fires in the area, the Big Rock Mesa Homeowner’s Association and the Los Angeles County Fire Department Forestry Division are seeing fruits of goat labor at the conclusion of a project that began June 14 and ended Sept. 15.
In 1993, more than 240 DANIEL JOHNSON/PHOTO EDITOR
homes were destroyed or
severely damaged by the Topanga Canyon fire that spread from Las Virgenes to Pacific Coast Highway within three hours. The lives of the firefighters at the scene were all the more threatened because the flames were wind-driven.
A pro-active response from the community led to the birth of the Big Rock Mesa Field Modification Project at a 1995 meeting between the homeowner’s association and the fire council in Malibu, made up of citizens concerned with the city’s fire protection policies.
The problem was clear: there was too much fire-fueling vegetation on steep, vacant terrain for a human crew to clear effectively without the risk of personal or environmental harm. More help was needed to aid brush clearance mandated by county regulations.
“You can’t always hand clear with crews or machines because of the terrain and environmental concerns,” said Bill Schwarz, former homeowner’s association president. “In meeting with the fire department, we saw that there was a possibility of using goats.”
This wouldn’t be the first partnership between goats and brush-clearing. In 2001, a success story unfolded on a strip of land north of Zuma beach where 600 goats cleared brush that could potentially accelerate the rate in which fires reached nearby homes.
Although a larger number of goats were used for the 2001 project, the challenge this time was the much closer vicinity of homes to hazardous vegetation in Big Rock.
After going through the application process, the homeowner’s association received a $35,000 grant from the nonprofit Sacramento Regional Foundation, which partners with organizations to improve communities.
Deputy J. Lopez, head of the forestry division in Pacoima, and several biologists conducted an initial environmental study that determined 400 goats were needed to cover the 25 to 35 acres of dangerous land. Goats were provided by a ranch in Orange County.
Two goat herders managed the goats, mostly kids, daily providing them with fresh water. They fed heartily on everything from poison oak to woody species like sumac.
The four-legged creatures were free to roam an enclosed area of about one to two acres at a time, depending on the amount of vegetation.
Portable electric fencing surrounded the goats during the day, when they ate off of one section of land at a time. At night, shepherd dogs and the herders led them to a sheltered area to sleep. The fencing kept the goats in one place and protected them from coyotes and mountain lions as well.
The point of the modification project was to alleviate the sole fire-causing factor that could be controlled.
“Fires are driven by topography, weather and vegetation,” Lopez said. “We can do something about the vegetation.”
To Schwarz, success of the project is more than apparent.
“The program works pretty conclusively,” he said. “We have really taken down the brush and fuel hazard and increased the fire life safety for the area way beyond what you could do by hand or with machines.”
October 23, 2003
