Prospect Park's Goat Gardeners Are Back on the Job

PROSPECT PARK, BROOKLYN — The goats arrived in May, to much fanfare. Eight in all, they hailed from Rhinebeck, New York, and were given a simple task: to digest the invasive weeds running rampant in Prospect Park's Zucker Natural Exploration Area.

Hurricane Sandy had knocked down numerous local trees, explained the Prospect Park Alliance (which paid for the goats), allowing for the unwanted undergrowth.

Now, the horned horticulturists would easily tend the treacherous terrain and avoid pesticide use, an environmentally-friendly way to make room for the replanting of native species. (Goats have been used this year at Brooklyn Bridge Park, too.)

Even given their ability to eat 20 percent of their body weight per day, clearing the 1.5-acre area was still expected to take several months.

It took six weeks.

But on Thursday, the Alliance announced that the squad is back to finish off what grew while they were away. They are, however, fewer in number. Diego, Max, Charlie Brown, Zoya, Oliva and Reese have returned from their upstate home at Green Goats, but Raptor and Skittles have not joined them.

"We will miss them," said Mary Keehbauch, who leads the Prospect Park Alliance's Natural Resources Crew, "but their absence just reflects how productive the goats were in removing weeds during their first stay in the Park."

Sad but true.

A child and Forestry technician Christoper Gucciardo greeting Diego the goat in May

Pictured at top: Skittles the goat. Photos by John V. Santore