Prairie Sportsman

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Narrator

Whitewater State Park in Southeast Minnesota, features dramatic topography with steep Lovelands that early settlers nicknamed Goat Prairie's because the only livestock that get climbed, the rugged cliffs were goats. So, it made sense to bring them in to help control invasive shrubs on the parks bluff Prairie's. This is our first attempt that prescribed grilled grazing at Whitewater State Park within parks, but our non game and wildlife divisions have been using goats for quite a few years, say eight, 10 years with some success on managing kind of larger blackberries. This site has been burned, multiple times say every two to three years for the last even 15, 20 years. But the problem we had the buckthorn was getting so thick and pockets that the fire was going on or going around it. We had a series of three wet years, where we couldn't get good burn. Those things helped us decide, hey, we need to try something new that we were not getting enough fire on the site. And that's really what drove us to try the goat grazing. The whole site is about 20 acres, so 10 acres in each paddock and there are 55 goats. The entire paddock system is set up with temporary. kind of a woven electric fence, we can adjust paddocks as we need to. If we need to make it a little smaller, little larger, move them over to a patch of buckthorn, it's really easy, to move that paddock fencing around to meet our management needs. There are signs that, warn that it is electrified just in case a visitor does wander up and see the fences. This site is remote, so there is no hiking trail to this site, but they're very visible from the campground and road. There is definitely a hierarchy within the herd, there's a lead billy, his name is Bat and he definitely controls, the herd he's sorts out some of the females and keeps the younger males kind of in check and then that whole series of younger, billy goats are always kind of jocking for their position within the herd. (upbeat music) We brought them in right around the 1st of July and our plan is to have them through mid October. The focus is on buckthorn, honeysuckle and other brushy Woody species that have been problematic on this site. These particular goats seem to really prefer the buckthorn actually, they went around and they ate the ends, the new growth of the buckthorn first and then after they kind of cleaned out the new fresh growth, they kind of make the rounds back around and eat a little bit further down the stem, to the older vegetation. So, it kind of took two rounds before they were, really making a pretty big impact of browsing. And they really didn't come down to the sumac at the bottom of the hill here until the buckthorn was mostly defoliated at the top of the hill. Now we're on the, up on the main blood Prairie of this site and if you look behind us, you can see, how much Woody vegetation, there's a lot of buckthorn, I see some honeysuckle, some sumac, and really the goats have done it. Just an outstanding job of browsing this site. The goats have just really enjoyed browsing out here on the cliffs. So, oftentimes in the evening and early morning, they're on these rock outcrop standing right up on the rocks and on edge of that cliff. So, that's a real treat for our visiting, for our visitors at the campground to watch them for right down below us. This project really started approximately 20 years ago, back behind us here, this was not open like it is right now, it was really just filled in with red Cedar, buckthorn, other trees. So, and historically it should have been more like this, so we came in here with chainsaws and we really removed a lot of the Cedar trees, other trees, shrubs, and opened it up and then started burning it. We have at least 20 sites that are similar to this, that we're working on and this was, we probably started on one of the worst ones as far as buckthorn and that was on purpose so that we could see how they would help us in the fight against buckthorn. I think it's worth rotating goats through almost all of our sites, especially the ones that are having brushed problems. Now, hopefully there's more a ground vegetation, fine fuels that our next buyer actually carries through. And then this patch will be kind of maintained by fire long term, but we just needed that extra boost to make them packed from the goat grazing. This project is funded with Parks and Trails Legacy Funds and we use those same funds to do prescribed Prairie other invasives work. So, this is just a perfect fit. -

Narrator

Goat grazing, the 20 acre site, costs $7,500 by comparison brushed sawing, the same area would cost $10,000 or more and a prescribed burn about 2000, but goats also free up a cruise time for other priority projects. For me now, going forward, this is gonna be another tool in the toolbox, another treatment, in addition to fire and cutting that we can use for restoration practices. (soft music)