Meet the Sheep: BART Welcomes a New Animal to Its Fire Mitigation Toolkit

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July 25, 2023 | Rapid Transit

Meet the Sheep: BART Welcomes a New Animal to Its Fire Mitigation Toolkit

Written by Bay Area Rapid Transit Communications Department



For the past two years, BART’s grazing goats have munched away at dried grasses around BART property. It’s a winning deal for the bleaters and for BART: the goats want to eat, and BART wants to sustainably mitigate fire hazards around its property. And the public love them, too; earlier this year, BART unveiled a horned anime mascot inspired by the caprine.

But this year, the goats are gone. Fret not, though, as there’s another photogenic nibbler in town. BART has added a new animal to its fire mitigation arsenal: self-shearing sheep. ... Sheep and goats belong to the same subfamily, Caprinae, and they both like to eat. Sheep, however, prefer grazing grasses and short roughage, while goats gravitate toward taller woody plants. It’s beneficial to rotate the animals every few years, said Mike Canaday, owner of the Coalinga-based Living Systems Land Management, from which BART contracts its fire-mitigating grazers.

“BART has been using goats for a while now, meaning there’s more fine grasses and less brush now,” Canaday said. “The sheep graze the grasses, while the goats go for the coarser brittle.” ... Josh Soltero, a Fence and Irrigation Technician at BART who supports the grazing project, has noticed some key personality differences in his time working with the animals.




“The sheep look like fluffy goats,” he said. “But the goats are a little friendlier. They’ll come up to you and feel you out. The sheep are more standoffish.”

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