Goats may be here to stay
Posted Jul 5, 2016 10:19 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
City officials are calling the pilot weed program in the city’s north-end a big success.
You may have noticed roughly 100 goats grazing in Confluence Park over the past three weeks.
Calgary Parks Urban Conservation lead Chris Manderson says the program has shown goats to be a viable, environmentally-friend and cost-effect approach to invasive plants.
It’ll come to an end on Sunday, once it’s done they’ll conduct a review and possibly expand the project later.
“The other cool thing about how well this pilot has gone is how the public responded, most everyone loved it and we did too,” he said. “We have a bit of work to do, we have to look at how well the project went and logistics moving forward.”
Among some of the big questions they’ll face is where do they house the animals and how do they transport them from site to site.
He says they’ll also have to come back to council with recommendations.
“Currently you can’t have livestock in the city except under some very specific circumstances, parks for the most part don’t allow that,” said Manderson. “So, we’ll be putting that question forward this fall, I hope. Here’s some options what do we do?”
“I think we would want to expand it to some of our larger area parks, those are the areas where we would be focusing on what we call our legislated weeds.”
In terms of the cost, he says roughly $25,000 was budgeted for 35 hectares, far more cost effective than paying an individual to spray one hectare at $1,500.
Manderson says the other benefit here is it may reduce, if not eliminate the use of pesticides.
“It’s going to be those sorts of things that we look at including how often do they have to come back to do weed control.”
“We knew this would be something most people were going to look forward too, we were even surprised by how positive it was, I’m not sure that we got any negative feedback.”
They’re holding a meet and greet event on Saturday, given the public interest, they’re going to allow people to meet some of the baby goats.
On July 9th, anyone who wants to drop by Confluence Park from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., to meet the Shepherd, park staff and the goats.
