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Al_HikesAZ
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Joined: 21 Jun 2005 Posts: 263 Location: Scottsdale, AZ
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Posted: 7/16/2006, 7:22 pm Post subject: Looking to prevent a fire? Hire a goat |
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Just saw this and got a kick out of it.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/15052915.htm
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Looking to prevent a fire? Hire a goat
ALLISON HOFFMAN
Associated Press
SAN DIEGO - When it comes to preventing brush fires, a charming brown-and-cream goat named Tim Buck might give Smokey Bear a run for his money.
With fire season under way, residents of a San Diego neighborhood devastated by the 2003 Cedar fire have commissioned Tim and 350 of his friends to eat their way through chaparral encroaching on newly rebuilt homes.
"We're once burned and twice shy," said Karen Reimus, who lost her home in the Cedar fire. "Lightning does sometimes strike twice."
Fire authorities say this fire season could be a bad one in Southern California, with an excess of growth from a wet 2005 dried out by a relatively rain-free winter this year. Earlier this month, a fire apparently set by two young boys raced through a San Diego canyon, prompting precautionary evacuations in a residential neighborhood, though no structures were burned. Other fires forced evacuations in San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties.
Goats are being used more often in California to thin undergrowth in areas where controlled burns are too risky or terrain is too difficult for humans to navigate, according to Tom Hoffman, chief of fire prevention for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Oakland and Laguna Beach, both ravaged by fires in the 1990s, have used goats for years. The animals also have been put to work in Utah and Arizona, where fire officials credited them with helping limit blazes that scarred the state last month.
Goats relish their jobs; they need no prodding to eat their way through tasty underbrush. All they require is some water, some supervision and some portable fencing to keep them under control.
Reimus and her neighbors in Whispering Ridge, a development built on a woodsy canyon rim neighboring the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, raised about $13,000 to hire a local company to keep the goats grazing on city-owned land behind their homes for about two weeks. The $750-per-acre cost is about one-fifth that of a human crew.
A block party - complete with balloons, muffins, and handmade "Goat X-ing" signs - accompanied the goats' recent arrival. Their trek across a cul-de-sac was interrupted by stops to sample some ice plant lining the sidewalk.
Herders and dogs maneuvered the goats between two houses onto a hillside covered with brush, some tender young saplings and the coal-black stubs of trees still left standing after the Cedar inferno, which scorched 273,000 acres and destroyed 2,820 buildings, including 312 homes in the pricey area around Whispering Ridge.
Tim and the others promptly set about enjoying a sunny brunch al fresco, gorging themselves on the plant matter fire officials describe as "accumulated ground fuel."
The goats are locals, hired from a ranch just southeast of San Diego. Ranch manager Johnny Gonzales said his herd is getting more fire prevention work than ever.
"All they want to do is eat, so it works out to everyone's advantage," said Gonzales, whose business is named Environmental Land Management Goats.
Hiring the goats was the brainchild of Reimus and Jerry Mitchell, a retired Navy pilot who nearly lost his home in the 2003 fires. Mitchell founded the Fire Safe Council - a sort of Neighborhood Watch program for fires - in the Scripps Ranch area of San Diego, and helped Reimus set up an offshoot group.
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evenstar
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Joined: 03 Jan 2003 Posts: 5548 Location: SCW by way of CA
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Posted: 7/16/2006, 7:38 pm Post subject: |
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Hmmmmm....Wonder what we could get for GTG? ![Twisted Evil](images/smiles/icon_twisted.gif) _________________ John Richardson and Richie Rich, El Perro de Playero
http://members.tripod.com/~evenstar/index.html
http://www.arizonahikers.com
When the Man waked up he said, "What is Wild Dog doing here?" And the Woman said, "His name is not Wild Dog anymore, but the First Friend, because he will be our friend for always and always and always. Take him with you when you go hunting."
--Rudyard Kipling, from Just So Stories, 1902 |
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heather
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Joined: 05 May 2006 Posts: 266 Location: Mesa
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Posted: 7/17/2006, 3:04 am Post subject: |
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I have never heard of that before. Weird, but I guess it works. Just got back from Huntington Beach area. On the way I saw a fire in Beaumont. Pretty small one. On the way back (3 days later) I saw an even bigger fire there on a different mountain. Also there were about 7 firemen along the median rail putting out a fire in the dried bushes there. I wish I had gotten a picture of them as I have never seen them in action before. |
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azbackpackr Hi Tech Wizardess
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Joined: 31 Dec 2005 Posts: 3639 Location: Needles CA
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Posted: 7/17/2006, 6:43 am Post subject: |
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It is hilarious that they paid $13,000 for some goats, though. Around here, in this rural area, if you had a goat and wanted to get rid of it you'd pretty much have to just give it away, especially a billy goat! I know, they had to pay the herders, too, who are most likely laughing all the way to the bank. |
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