In this photo, we show the perfect situation for water’s edge vegetation management. The photo, taken today on the Conservancy’s flagship preserve, shows goats grazing on bankside vegetation.
Why I said “perfect” in the lead for this post has to do with the fact that for all the grazing goats do on this type of vegetation, other means can be avoided. That includes the use of heavier footed animals (e.g., cattle), which could crush Giant garter snake burrows and which leave pockets for mosquito larvae to thrive. Also, larger animals deposit heftier “leavings” that tends to get pretty nasty over time. Alternatively, we could use herbicides, but we try to avoid that as much as possible, although in the world of aquatic weed management, sometime this is unavoidable. And humans could get in these areas with string trimmers and similar equipment to keep vegetation under control, but then we have worker safety issues.
Our experience is that goats consider this type of vegetation as candy, so to speak, and they typically go to it first. Importantly, the green food pictured here consists of about 90 percent water, so there are some nutrition deficits. The goats must have upland vegetation nearby to make certain a full range of nutrition is available.
Our desire is that the Conservancy gets scaled to a point where it can have a permanent herd of goats on its own, and circulate them through the marsh complexes in a sequence that makes for a perfect condition for the management and care of critical habitat for several of the Conservancy’s “Covered Species.” That’s our hope anyway. Goat hope.
