A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
More people are turning to goats to remove invasive plant species from their backyards. This trend makes an impact in the American South, where kudzu vines have been a nuisance for more than a hundred years. From WUOT and the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, Jacqui Sieber reports.
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JACQUI SIEBER, BYLINE: On a wooded hillside just outside Knoxville, an army of more than 30 goats chew on kudzu, using their horns and hooves to pull it off of trees and shrubs.
DUSTIN HESS: Chewbacca, chill.
SIEBER: Dustin Hess is the owner and operator of G.O.A.T Grazers.
HESS: It's a bunch of different goats. Like, Gilbert right here is a Nigerian dwarf goat. Hades (ph) is a kiko goat. Yin (ph) is a Lamancha.
SIEBER: When they aren't butting heads, these goats take this job seriously. With their combined efforts, they help restore natural habitats that were taken over by kudzu.
HESS: They're environmentally friendly. They're effective on tough terrain. So I - you couldn't get a machine up here even if you tried, right? I can throw goats up here and they can clear out this whole area.
(SOUNDBITE OF GOATS BLEATING)
SIEBER: Kudzu is an invasive plant from Asia that thrives in the humidity of the South. Unchecked, it creates thick, green blankets over trees and shrubs that suffocate what's below.
(SOUNDBITE OF GOAT BLEATING)
SIEBER: Goat grazing services can be more effective in taking out Kudzu than herbicides and machinery.
AARON STEELE: We often say that they are their own best billboard.
SIEBER: Aaron Steele is the founder of Goats On The Go, a network of more than 70 affiliates nationwide.
STEELE: Because it's hard to ignore goats out of context - you know, at a public park, on a golf course, at a school.
SIEBER: And he says they're not just good to fight kudzu in the South.
STEELE: We're also seeing a tremendous amount of growth in the more arid West, where goats are primarily used to remove the vegetative fuel that could serve as fuel for a wildfire.
SIEBER: In a Knoxville backyard, Jake Ramsey points to a section of grass that was once covered in kudzu.
JAKE RAMSEY: So you can see that we've knocked it back quite a bit.
SIEBER: Yeah. Wow. OK. That's a lot.
RAMSEY: Mm-hmm.
SIEBER: He's the owner of Knox Goats, which has been renting goats since 2018.
RAMSEY: Before, when I first started, we were happy to get a kudzu job, you know? It's like people didn't really believe the process. But now, I mean, people are starting to see it.
SIEBER: So if you come across some goats mingling about, they may be helping free native plants from the invasive kudzu, one hoof at a time.
For NPR News, I'm Jacqui Sieber in Knoxville.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLYPHIA'S "G.O.A.T.") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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