A total of two dozen goats from a farm in a bucolic part of New York state are on a city outing – let loose in Manhattan’s Riverside Park on Wednesday to munch on invasive weeds.
Phones out, spectators crowded around fences and counted down as the hungry black, brown and white goats were herded in a ceremonial “Running of the Goats”
to begin their latest task as natural weed whackers.
“They chowed down on Japanese knotweed, they noshed on porcelain berry, they snacked on multiflora rose, they easily traversed the hard-to-reach terrain behind me and gulped down poison ivy without even giving it a second thought,” said Dan Garodnick, Riverside Park Conservancy president and CEO.
“Putting them to work in ‘Goatham’ is like treating them to an all-you-can-eat buf- fet. It is healthy for the goats and it is good for the entire environment. That is farm to table.”
Using the goats to remove invasive spe- cies at Riverside Park is an environmentally friendly win-win – the goats get to feast
on overgrown brush and Riverside Park Conservancy doesn’t have to use chemicals to remove the weeds.
People visit the Central Park in New York, the United States, on April 16, 2019. With a history of over 160 years, the Central Park was created as the nation’s first major landscaped public park. (Photo:Xinhua)
