BART turns to goats to help manage vegetation

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is using goats to graze on brush and reduce firebreaks on its right of way, according to an article on the agency's website.

Contracted from a herding business, the Spanish-Boer cross goats eat dry brush on a steep hillside, the type of terrain that can be hazardous to human groundskeepers using mowers, weed whackers and other power tools.

"Mowers can spark fires on this kind of brush that we see in a drought," Josh Soltero, an irrigation/grounds worker in BART's grounds maintenance department, said in the post. "The goats can get into places we can't. They save a lot of shoulders and backs." 

Neighbors in nearby residential areas are fans of the program — they prefer the sound of bleating goats to the roar of power mowers, he said.