AUSTIN, Texas \u2014\u00a0Austinites and visitors walking along Lady Bird Lake will notice animals, like squirrels, the occasional armadillo and… goats?<\/p>\n
The farm animals were released by The Trail Conservancy, an organization based in Austin that focuses on managing the city\u2019s natural lands and trails.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a nonprofit, we care for 120 acres of natural areas along the hike-and-bike trails, so everything we can do to keep our staff safer and more efficient, we\u2019re going to try,\u201d said Grady Reed, park operations chief for The Trail Conservancy.<\/p>\n
One of those methods is the use of goats, which will munch on poison ivy and invasive species that line the Ann and Roy Butler trail.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the stuff you\u2019re seeing in this space are vines that are going into the trees and are really threatening the urban tree canopy,\u201d Reed said.<\/p>\n
According to Reed, the goats eating the vegetation is a first step in their yearly efforts to revitalize the trail.<\/p>\n
\u2018We generally bring them once a year in August,\u201d said Reed. \u201cBy doing it in August, we have a much longer window before everything grows right back. The native plants are going to pop out new leaves. They\u2019ll be fine. It just allows us to be really efficient and strategic in terms of managing the invasive species in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Staff from The Trail Conservancy will then do planting and seeding in the fall.<\/p>\n
Austin is not the only city that has used goats for vegetation control. Dallas Parks and Recreation used goats in February to eat vegetation at White Rock Lake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014\u00a0Austinites and visitors walking along Lady Bird Lake will notice animals, like squirrels, the occasional armadillo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[12926,244,3564,2160,132,134,133,3565,102,138,66,223,82,27,1569,2053,835],"class_list":["post-407534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-andres-rendon","tag-animals","tag-app-community","tag-app-top-stories","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-community-news","tag-dallas","tag-el-paso","tag-local","tag-news","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}