"We Love Goats" 

"We Love Goats" is a project undertaken by the Bear Creek Community Garden Association in cooperation with El Paso County government. The goats manage weeds on the 19 acres surrounding our community vegetable garden, thereby avoiding the use of chemical sprays that could make the vegetables unsafe to eat. They enable our area of the park to be free of herbicide use, which also benefits park users, pets, and wildlife.

Lani Malmberg and her herd of 500 weed-eating cashmere goats returned to Beak Creek Park East in July and September of 2007. Over a thousand people visited the goats and talked to Lani about her work. Lani Malmberg, the top professional in her field, moves her herds totaling 2,500 goats through federal, state and private lands in the Rocky Mountain West year round to control noxious weeds and clear brush from waterways. Her company provides the sole means of weed control in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where no chemical sprays are used by the city government in the creeks that run through the city. BCGA had done fund raising for several years and was able to carry out a limited grazing in 2003. In 2007 a $10,000 grant from the Colorado Garden and Home Show in Denver enabled BCGA to provide an ideal weed control program by bringing in the goats for one week in early summer and one week in early fall. The noxious weed count has dropped dramatically in the grazed area and wild grasses are thriving.