Goats will return to South Side Park for this year’s Goat Fest PGH. During their visit, they’ll work their jaws, fill their stomachs, quell invasive species — and get a lot of love.
The annual event will take place this Saturday, July 25th from 12 to 4 p.m. on Arlington Ball Field. Attendees will have a view of working goats, visit the petting zoo, enjoy family friendly activities, find a therapy goat, hear live music and patronize local vendors, food trucks and a plant sale.
Goat Fest began in 2017, when the Friends of South Side Park (FOSSPark) partnered with the nonprofit Allegheny GoatScape for part of their multi-year restoration project. Japanese knotweed and porcelain berry vine ran rampant in the remnants of an old incline — and Pittsburgh’s terrain is sometimes too steep for people and heavy machinery to traverse.
Hillary Steffes, GoatScape’s interim executive director, explained Pittsburgh-specifically has a lot of “topographically severe” land, making removal work often dangerous and inaccessible — for both humans and machinery. Goats offer an alternative for large volume plant removal.
“It’s part of a sort of complex attempt at conservation work,” said Steffes. “The goats naturally want to eat a lot of the plants that folks are targeting — plants that are taking over spaces and are the product of abused land. And the goats naturally want to eat a lot of these plants anyway, so they’re there just eating, doing what they want to do.”
GoatScape brings goats out to eat invasive vegetation, or as Steffes said, “doing what they want to do.” Plants are removed, but not eradicated, as phase one of restoration efforts, followed by planting competitive species or continued removal work.
Kitty Vagley is the head of the Goat Fest committee for FOSSPark.
“There’s two purposes [of Goat Fest]. One is to raise money to bring the goats back and for other uses inside South Side Park,” said Vagley. “And the second reason is to invite people into South Side Park, because so many people don’t even know that it exists.”
Vagley is the “mastermind” behind Goat Fest and works in South Side Park, according to Steffes.
“Goat Fest is the one day you can actually get into the fenced-off area and visit with the working goats,” said Vagley. “I do think people will come back after Goat Fest just to watch the animals work, even though they can’t get inside the enclosure and pet them. It’s just fun to see those quiet goats eating away nearby.”
Goat Fest is a significant economic, ecological and community event for South Side Park, but Steffes notes that it also brings up important questions.
“Why did this park become less accessible or less valuable to people? What makes it more valuable now? Why are we doing any of this? How much have we done?”
Steffes became the interim executive director of Allegheny GoatScape earlier this year, but has been one of their main field workers since 2020.
“I got to witness and personally experience firsthand these sort of human, animal, and ecological relations and this matrix of how we all work with each other and interact with each other,” said Steffes. “And that gave me a very good understanding of what the org[anization] and what the goats and what the people need to tackle and take on this really complex social, cultural, and ecological problem.”
She says her experiences in the field have led her to take some redirections in GoatScape, like prioritizing work on public lands over private and refusing contracts that don’t contain follow-up management plans. Steffes also aims to use this position to set up systems limiting overwork sometimes found in nonprofit cultures.
“I’ve dedicated my body to this kind of work and I tore muscles in my back. I herniated discs. I’ve pulled my shoulder multiple times. I’ve dislocated fingers.”
The goats are currently working on South Side Park’s Jurassic Valley Ecological Restoration Plan. According to Vagley, they’ll be 100% done by the end of this year.
“But the goats are moving west,” said Vagley. “We might have Jurassic Valley portion done, but there’s other parts of the park that need a little bit of help from the goats.”