The Herd is Here! Goats Eating Up Lawton Drive Hillside

With a buffet of dry mustard, rye and thistle spread out before them, a herd of goats wasted no time putting the bite on fire season Thursday morning in Lemon Grove.

Hopping off a trailer, the goats from Environmental Land Management made themselves right at home. As well they should. This is the third year that the city and fire department have brought in the hungry animals to clear nearly nine acres off the hillside below Lawton Drive.

What is delicious to goats is dangerous to us. The dry grasses they're eating up are fuel capable of feeding a fire—and spreading it. Goats, however, are only too happy to munch every last bit of flammable material. 

There will be about 200 female goats on the fire abatement job, creating defensible space for the more than 70 homes in the Lawton Drive/Camino De Las Palmas area. They can clear about an acre a day, according to ELM's Johnny Gonzales. When they finish, they move on to another fire prevention project on the 6800 block of Central Avenue to clear up to four acres.

The parcels the goats are clearing have long been abandoned by the former owner—the defunct LG Environmental Properties Inc. The city has had to clear the open space annually over the course of several years, and has placed liens on the property in an effort to recover code enforcement fines, fees and forced abatement costs needed to remove fire and safety hazards—but to no avail.
 
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