Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is bringing in the goats.
This week, the city of Los Angeles, in partnership with the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society, deployed 500 goats to clear “overgrown, mostly invasive vegetation” on a field at the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve that has seen repeated brush fires over the past several years. The basin is a 2,000-acre recreation space the city leases from the federal government.
“The wildlife reserve’s newest residents are working hard to enhance sustainability and manage vegetation to reduce fire risks,” Bass posted on X.
Los Angeles City Council member Imelda Padilla proposed the goat-grazing pilot in December 2024, noting that the Sepulveda Basin is “an important hub for outdoor recreation and is soon to be amongst the training facilities for the upcoming Olympics and Paralympics in 2028.” LA28 has slated BMX, skateboarding, 3x3 basketball and pentathlon to take place in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area.
Padilla stated in her 2024 motion that invasive plants have dramatically increased in the basin since the city stopped using the herbicide glyphosate in 2019 after the World Health Organization declared it a likely carcinogen. “Goatscaping” is a “creative, eco-friendly solution” for clearing dry brush and invasive plants, “reducing wildfire risk while protecting sensitive habits and nearby neighborhoods,” she said in a Tuesday Instagram post.
Los Angeles joins a host of other California cities, including San Diego, Oakland and West Sacramento, that have brought in goats to chew through weeds that pose fire risk. Laguna Beach has used goats for vegetation management and wildfire fuel reduction along the city’s outer edges since the early 1990s.
The Reno, Nevada, Fire Department deployed 250 goats to help reduce dry brush and invasive plants on city-owned open space in July. Targeted grazing is “an environmentally friendly and sustainable option for managing noxious weeds and flammable vegetation,” the fire department stated in a press release.
Goats’ nimble lips and tongues that can grasp, hold and manipulate objects allow them to eat very short grass and foliage other domestic livestock can’t, according to a 2014 scholarly review of goat grazing as a wildfire prevention tool. In hills around Menlo Park, Oakland, Los Altos and Berkeley, California, goats have reduced fuel loads in areas too steep for manual labor or mowers and removed vegetation without disturbing roots or facilitating erosion, the paper states.
“Grazing is probably the most ecologically sound technique for creating discontinuities in fuels, mainly at the shrubby layer, and disrupting fuel ladders,” the authors concluded.
Bass launched a strategy in July to address public safety issues in the wildlife reserve, which includes removing nearly 100 homeless encampments.
