Hard-Working Goats Help Restore Portuguese Bend Reserve

Some 60 people hiked down into a canyon at the Portuguese Bend Reserve this past Saturday to meet some hard-working heroes that played a key role in an important conservation project managed by the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy.

There, they got up close and personal with 400-plus Boer goats who had just finished clearing 12 acres of unwanted weeds and vegetation from the canyon—all in about 16 days.

The crowd, which included dozens of kids, got to feed goats jostling in a pen and pet baby goats just a few days old. One highlight was a live demo of nearly 60 goats being herded across the canyon floor by a hyperactive border collie named Kate, a fast, tough goat wrangler who clearly loves her work.

“This reserve is well-used by the community, and this is an important restoration project for us, “ said Andrea Vona, the conservancy’s executive director.

“Meet the Goat Grazers” gave interested residents a look at what the conservancy is all about—the preservation of open space and restoration of natural habitats across the Peninsula.

The conservancy preserves and manages more than 1,600 acres of open space; operates nature centers in San Pedro and Rolling Hills Estates; and runs educational programs in Peninsula and South Bay elementary schools. It also operates nurseries to raise the native plants needed for restoration efforts like the one under way at Portuguese Bend.   

“This offered us a good opportunity to link one of our projects to the community in a special way, because who doesn’t love goats?” Vona said.

Boer goats are grazing machines that can eat up to six pounds a day of the toughest vegetation around. Even nasty, spiky things like cactus and poison oak don’t slow them down when they’re on the munch. 

“You can’t fill up a goat,” said Mike Canaday, a contractor who managed the herd.  “They’ll eat all day. ” 

The feasting goats are just the first line of attack in the conservancy’s effort to restore two natural habitats in the reserve largely destroyed in the Rancho Palos Verdes fire in August 2009. That fire damaged six homes, forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 residents and consumed 235 acres of land. 

Much of the burned landscape—165 acres of it—belonged to the reserve. The blaze tore through the small canyon and destroyed coastal sage and cactus sage habitats that are home to two endangered species of native songbirds—the California gnatcatcher and the cactus wren. 

After the fire hit the canyon, said Danielle DeFer, the group’s conservation director, the wrens didn’t fly away. As if in shock, they hunkered down, refused to leave the canyon and began to die off.

And until the slow-growing cactus in the canyon grows to a certain height, the habitat won’t be complete, cactus wrens won’t resume breeding and rebuilding their numbers, which were already low before the fire.

Weeds and other vegetation have grown quickly, crowding out native plants needed to restore the fragile habitats. To wipe out the unwanted vegetation, the conservancy called in the goats. 

Grazing has been used more to clear land and create firebreaks. It’s cleaner and cheaper than using mowers, tractors and other fuel-powered machinery. Goats can handle steep hills and tricky terrain better than men with machines, not to mention poison ivy and other hazardous plants.

And for clearing out areas where there is an endangered species, like a certain type of mouse or snake, vegetarian goats are safer to use than noisy, dangerous machines, Canaday said.

Goat grazing isn’t new to the conservancy. Two years ago, it recruited 250 goats to clear 21 acres of non-native plants and thick thatch at the Three Sisters Reserve. But the Portuguese Bend project was trickier, DeFer said. 

Goats are indiscriminate eaters, which posed no problem at Three Sisters because there weren’t many native plants to protect. At Portuguese Bend, she said, the approach was “more experimental,” because they had to devise ways to keep gobbling goats away from the native plants needed to restore the lost habitats.

Their plan was successful, but labor-intensive. Native plants were identified and sprayed with a peppermint scent used to deter foraging deer, and which seems to dampen even a goat’s appetite. 

Still, the goats had to be constantly watched, moved to new areas to graze, and fenced off from other areas.

“If you leave them too long in one area and they get hungry, they’ll go for the native plants even if they’ve been sprayed,” DeFer said.

Managing goats is the border collies’ mission.

“Their instinct is to herd, and they love doing it,” said Canaday, who brought in the goats and the collies used in the project. “That’s what they live for.”

Canaday showed the crowd how Kate, his five-year-old border collie, controlled a large herd of goats in a vast, open field.

And Kate put on a show. Though distracted by the large crowd, she responded quickly to voice and whistle commands from Canaday and smoothly directed the herd where she was told.

“Kate’s invaluable to us,” said Canaday, who often praised the athleticism and “work ethic” of his dogs.

One well-trained dog can respond to more than 100 voice and whistle commands, he said, and can herd as many as 1,100 goats.

“It takes lots of guts to herd goats,” he said. “Goats aren’t stupid. They’ll get a dog’s number. If the dog won’t make a move, the goats won’t move either. But if the dog nips one of them a couple of times, they’ll get with the program.”

With the job done, Canaday packed up his goats and collies Saturday afternoon to get them out of the canyon before the rains came. But they’ll be back on the Peninsula soon, cleaning up growth around RPV City Hall.

And there’s a lot more restoration work ahead for the reserve. Goats chewed acres of weeds to the ground, but herbicides will still have to be used to kill the roots.  There are still weeds and vegetation to be taken out by weed whippers and mowers, and lots of replanting to be done.

But this first important step in the canyon cleanup went very well, DeFer said.

“The goats had 12 acres to clear, and they did it a lot faster than I thought they would,” she said.

Evidence of the fire still remains in the canyon, with blackened trees and fire-scarred bushes scattered throughout. On the canyon walls, DeFer points out some progress. On one side, there’s a big patch of coastal sage scrub habitat, dotted with coastal sage, bush sunflower and lemonade berry bushes. On the other side, there’s a small patch of cactus scrub habitat, mainly cactus, but with some sunflowers and other annuals.

Patches like that spell hope for the threatened songbirds.

“This is going to be a big improvement for them,” she said. “We’re hoping to see their numbers increase.”