Goats remove wildfire fuel in Lincoln

Officials with the Bureau of Land Management are fighting wildfire fuel with goat power. They launched a goat grazing project on 16 acres in the historic settlement of Lincoln behind the State Historic Site off U.S. 380 in the Rio Bonito Acquired Lands Tract 3. The purpose of the grazing is to reduce the amount of vegetation available to wildfire, decrease the risk of loss to adjacent property and to improve watershed conditions. The grazing with as many as 35 goats at a time began last week and is expected to last several more weeks, said James Savage with the BLM. "Goat grazing is used all over the West," he said Monday. "We're using them here to graze sacaton, which causes highly flammable conditions. Mowing leaves the material on the ground. It's not removing it. With goats, the fuel (for wildfire) is removed and any invasive seeds are destroyed in their gut. We'll probably be there several weeks this summer."...more