Goats are battling invasive plants in the Underhill Preserve in Nassau County on Long Island.
"The issue with invasive species is they out-compete native vegetation," said John Wernet, supervising forester, Region 1, NYS Department of Environmental Conservation."Particularly troublesome is the mile-a-minute, it’s capable of growing up to six inches a day and if we do nothing we allow the invasive plants to take over and we lose precious grassland."
Goats typically eat 3 to 5 pounds of vegetation per day.
"It’s safe to assume that everything in the six acres where we have them fenced in will be munched on, but I’m hoping they’ll focus on the invasives more so," Wernet said.
That was how it turned out when goats were used at another preserve on Long Island in 2014 where they found one breed of goat was particularly helpful.
"The Nubian goats are preferable because the roof of their mouth is very hard and they’re able to eat species like multiflora rose, which is very thorny," Wernet said.
The goats will be there two to three months.
"We did a little bit of prep work with chainsaws and cut a lot of the invasives back so the goats will eat the shoots and stress the plant and kill it," Wernet said. "And we’re going to monitor the site. We’re there several times a week to make sure they’re healthy and they have water and also to see how well they’re doing. We might pull some more goats in or take some goats out depending on how aggressive the management is."
Planning is underway to develop public access of the Underhill Preserve.