Goats Were Supposed to Reduce Fire Risk In the Arroyo, But They May Have Made It Worse

GUEST OPINION

Toyon-Sumac (Photos – Tim Martinez)

After the Eaton Fire, we all agreed that fire risk in the Arroyo Seco needed to be reduced.

By Tim Martinez

The City of Pasadena recently implemented a goat grazing program to further that goal. Now that the program has ended, the results are not what was promised. In fact, the program may have made fire conditions in the Arroyo worse.

The Promise

The City’s Scope of Work described the purpose of the program as reducing invasive vegetation, maintaining healthy native habitat, and supporting sustainable fire prevention practices. It required protection of native plants, avoidance of sensitive habitats, and best management practices to minimize erosion and protect water quality.

The City characterized the terrain as “mixed slopes, open grassland” and the vegetation as “non-native grasses, invasive shrubs, and some woody vegetation.”

What Happened Instead

In reality, the goats were not just grazing open grassland or non-native weeds. They were affecting mature native chaparral shrubs, oak woodland understory, young oaks, sycamores, elderberry, and other native vegetation. These are the living native landscape the program was supposed to protect.

Most concerning, the goats stripped bark from mature native shrubs including toyon, laurel sumac, and lemonade berry. In some cases, bark has been removed around most or all of major trunks and branches. This is called girdling.

Immediately beneath the bark is a thin living layer that includes the cambium and phloem, tissues that help the plant grow and move sugars from the leaves down to the roots. When goats strip bark, they can also strip or damage this living tissue, disrupting the flow of sugars between the leaves and roots. If that damage extends around most or all of a trunk or branch, the affected branch or canopy is likely to decline and die.

The plant may eventually resprout from the base, as chaparral shrubs often do after fire. But that does not replace the decades of mature canopy that have been lost. It also does not change the immediate fire concern: dying canopy becomes more dead fuel.

More Dead Fuel, Not Less

Since the Eaton Fire, people have been rightly concerned about accumulated dead wood, dead branches, and woody debris in the Arroyo. That is what needs to be removed. But goats do not eat accumulated deadwood. The dead branches, mounded dry limbs, dead eucalyptus material, and woody debris still have to be removed by crews.

If the girdled native canopy dies back, those crews will have even more dead material to remove.

The erosion issue makes the problem worse. The goats left steep slopes bare and disturbed in many grazed areas. Those are exactly the conditions where invasive annual plants, non-native grasses, mustard, and thistle take hold most aggressively. These plants dry out completely by midsummer and ignite easily.

Under healthy native canopy, grasses and weeds often stay greener longer because shade keeps slopes cooler and moister. The buffer is lost if the canopy is lost. The slopes get hotter, the weeds dry out faster, and fire risk increases.

After concerns were raised, City officials pointed to a next phase that may include hydroseeding, mulch, jute netting, and other stabilization measures. Those tools may help stabilize damaged areas, but they do not replace decades of mature native canopy. Good restoration begins by protecting the native plants. Habitat is not restored damaging mature native vegetation first and then trying to seed over the aftermath.

Before This Happens Again

Goat grazing can be effective in the right setting. In the natural lands of the Arroyo Seco, however,  careful planning, biological oversight, and clear limits on animal access was required. None of that happened.

The City should commission an independent, qualified biologist to conduct an honest after-action survey before summer arrives, including which native shrubs were girdled, which canopies are likely to die, how much new dead fuel may be created, and what intervention is needed now to address erosion and invasive plant regrowth.

The Arroyo Seco Master Plan Design Guidelines are explicit: fire mitigation must be balanced with habitat conservation, denuding of slopes is prohibited, and the living native landscape must be protected. The result on the ground was not consistent with those guidelines, and it was not what was presented to the City Council when this program was approved.

The One Arroyo Foundation funded the goat grazing portion of this program and has expressed interest in continuing it. That intention should give us all pause. A well-intentioned program can still cause real harm. In the Arroyo Seco, that harm is now visible. An honest accounting is the first step toward actually making the Arroyo safer.

 Tim Martinez is writing in his personal capacity.

Erosion and oak damage (Photos – Tim Martinez)

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