To prep for fire season, Glendale is turning to an all-natural method of brush clearing: goats

As the climate warms up and fire season intensifies, officials are turning to creative solutions to keep residents safe from wildfires.

Some of these solutions don’t take much effort at all — at least not human effort.

Take the city of Glendale, which has turned to goats (and a few sheep) for the past four years to clear out dry vegetation and other fire hazards from neighborhoods at risk of fire.

This year, the goats were contracted from Ventura Brush Goats, who have been clearing out brush in Ventura County for years. Over the course of a few weeks, Glendale Fire Department officials anticipate that the nearly 300 goats will consume a total of about 30 acres.

"They have the ability to work long shifts and they could climb steep hills, which can be very difficult for people to do, especially in the hot weather," Glendale's Fire Environmental Specialist Patty Mundo said.

And since goats are an all-natural method of clearing brush, there are a lot of environmental benefits as well.

"They fertilize and promote nutrients in the soil, which helps restore native plants, and they don't use chemicals like herbicides to kill the invasive weeds," Mundo said.

The goats and sheep cleared out invasive grass and dried brush at the pace of about an acre per day. That's because goats — as anyone who's spent time around them would know — are very active eaters, consuming as much as 4% of their body weight per day, according to Ventura Brush Goats.

There were a number of locations in Glendale where the goats' services were required — which means that they have to be herded, often through city neighborhoods.

Aside from their utility for clearing out brush, the goats can certainly command attention — at a media event Saturday, passers-by and bikers stopped by to visit a few goats in an enclosure. And although the goats working on eating the brush were mostly out of view, a few stray bleats were audible from the road if you listen carefully.

These goats were a hit among community members who stopped by to say hello.

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Kevin Tidmarsh/LAist

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"Everybody loves the goats. It just makes everybody happy," Mundo said. "We're trying to build a relationship, build a trust [with residents]. So they see that we're being proactive. And at the end of the day, we just want the homeowners to be proactive as well, to mitigate their risks, to provide a safe working area for firefighters."

That's especially important in a place like Glendale, which has a history of fires damaging structures and homes. The city, and surrounding areas like South Pasadena, dealt with a series of fires in the late 80s, including a wildfire that destroyed 67 homes. The fires were later found to have been caused by the city's arson investigator John Orr. History aside, areas like the Chevy Chase neighborhood (where the goats were on Saturday) and other hilly areas face elevated risks of fires.