When the 580-acre Quarry fire in Jefferson County got within a mile of the Waterton Campus in August, fire mitigation experts at Lockheed Martin’s headquarters realized they needed to do more to protect the 98 acres of open space there.
“I think a lot of folks realized through the Quarry fire how rugged the terrain is around here. And with increasing fire risk, we thought we should take a look at what our posture is along some of our major access roads,” said Sean Vogel, a Lockheed Martin Space’s Safety and Quality Assurance team member.
The terrain on campus is difficult to access, steep, and would require hazard pay for human teams to navigate due to threats like rattlesnakes.
Luckily, one specialized unit has the natural agility and appetite large enough to take on the job. They’re bearded, horned, hooved and 1,200 members strong – yep – they’re goats.
“When we evaluated how to best mitigate the fuels that allow the fire to move quickly and move up into the trees when you look at the terrain, goats were really the most logical choice,” Vogel said.
The goat team hired in December by Lockheed comes from Goat Green, an organization specializing in alternative fire mitigation.
“They eat [the vegetation], recycle it through their gut, put it back on the hillside,” said Goat Green herder Lani Malmberg.
By keeping the vegetation at manageable heights near powerlines, and creating natural fire breaks, the campus will reduce the potential for the risk of wildfires year-round.
“Some of the terrain you can't access with a mower or any machinery at all [but] the goats can get in,” Vogel said.
Part of the reason for the increased risk on campus and across metro Denver is due to the region’s below-normal rainfall in 2024, with Denver's Central Park weather station recording the driest summer in 77 years. The below-average numbers followed an unusually wet season the year prior, the combination of which resulted in flourishing grasses and brush that were suddenly left dry and easy to ignite.
“We've had well over a dozen fires in just the last 10 years,” said Vogel. “Some on campus that thankfully South Metro Fire [helped] mitigate and extinguish. [But] fire doesn’t really care about property lines, so we wanted to make sure we’re doing our part to take care of those areas.”
The goats will munch away until the job is done.
