By Michelle Reinig, Iowa Department of Natural Resources Park Manager
Prairie Rose State Park, near Harlan, is welcoming some special visitors this week, and they are taking some of the parks’ land management issues into their own . . . mouths.
This week about 20 goats will arrive to chow down on non-native honeysuckle and other nuisance vegetation threatening to crowd-out native plants in the park’s woodlands.
Park manager Michelle Reinig took the innovative step of hiring goats because “it just made so much sense.”
“Our resource is looking rather ‘sick,’ being overtaken by the woodland fugitive honeysuckle not to mention a few other invasives,” says Reinig. “The goats will help us get a handle on this overwhelming problem while loving the work that they do. This is a more ‘green’ approach than other methods of invasive control, and we like the idea of conservation and agricultural working together.”
Goats on the Go, a targeted-grazing company based in Ames, will provide the herd that will call Prairie Rose home for about 10 weeks.
“Goats are amazing creatures,” says Aaron Steele, co-owner of Goats on the Go. “They like to eat weeds and brush more than grass, and many of our biggest nuisance plants are at the top of the goats’ (dining) list.”
The peculiarities of goats’ tastes have significant implications for conservation groups that manage complex properties. Goats can be put to work controlling noxious honeysuckle, poison ivy, buckthorn and multiflora rose without the use of chemical herbicides or gas-powered machinery.
They also happily work in areas that would be uncomfortable and even dangerous for human workers – like steep slopes and dense woods.
The DNR has successfully used goats in land management projects in other parts of the state, most notably on the steep slopes in northeast Iowa.
Both Steele and co-owner Chad Steenhoek admit to taking some ribbing about their oddball enterprise but after three successful years, they are no longer “sheepish” about touting their business.
“We can’t take ourselves too seriously,” says Steele. “They are goats, after all. But once you see the good they can do, it’s hard not to talk about goats with everyone you meet.”
