Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumMark Twain National Forest Turns To Goats To Manage Invasive Plants
Removing nonnative plants from the glades and fields in a vast forest can be expensive and harmful to the environment.
Thats why Mark Twain National Forest is deploying a herd of goats to eat their way out of the problem.
Plants like blackberries and kudzu can turn a field from a grassy habitat for turkeys and quail into an overgrown thicket.
They create a large canopy. They compete for nutrients. And then they push out and eliminate a lot of the desirable native species that we have, said Brian Davidson, Botany and Invasive Species program manager at the Mark Twain forest.
https://news.stlpublicradio.org/health-science-environment/2020-08-12/mark-twain-national-forest-turns-to-goats-to-manage-invasive-plants
WhiteTara
(29,676 posts)There was so much activism around the plan to pour deadly chemicals on the non-natives. Looks like they got the messages.
demigoddess
(6,640 posts)in2herbs
(2,942 posts)by globe chamomile, aka stinknet. Thousands of acres where the desert once existed now gone. Myself and a few neighbors looked into hiring goats to eat the stinknet but our research concluded that even goats won't eat it. I did notice, however, that when it dies the horses ate it, so maybe goats will eat dead stinknet, too. Maybe there's a job opportunity for a landscaper with goats?? All I know is that there is far too much stinknet in my town to control by spraying.