Glendale fire crews are once again turning loose a herd of 200 goats on steep hillsides, using the animals to chew down grass and weeds that feed California wildfires.
For the fifth straight year, members of the Glendale Fire Department put the herd to work Wednesday on the large hills at Oakmont Country Club in Glendale, California. The animals clear grass, weeds, and other vegetation that can turn a spark into a fast-moving blaze.
Fox Weather reported that the department called this the second deployment of the goat squadron this year, aimed at cutting wildfire fuel and risk at strategic spots in very high fire hazard zones. The same goats last went into action in April.
The method is simple. Goats handle ground that is hard for crews and machines to work. They move across steep terrain and eat the fuel load in place, which can slow a fire’s advance and reduce the energy it releases if flames reach the area.
Fire officials frame the work around a basic rule of wildfire defense: clear space around people and property before the season turns ugly.
Joshua Allen, fire chief at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, put it plainly.
"When wildfire sparks in Southern California, defensible space is our greatest asset,"
Allen said.
That same practical approach showed up in related work at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in California. Captions tied to the coverage show goats running out of an 18-wheeler during an effort labeled Operation Goat Rope on Sept. 15, 2026. Ole Bush, founder of Shepherdess Land and Livestock, released the animals for that job. Marine Corps Cpl. Seferino Gamez provided photo credit for images of the release and the herd.
Whether on a Glendale country club hillside or a military air station, the job description does not change. The goats eat what fire would otherwise burn.
Glendale’s decision to use the animals year after year points to a tool that has earned a repeat role. Five straight seasons at Oakmont is not a one-off stunt. It is a scheduled fuel-reduction tactic in a part of the state that lives with extreme fire hazard labels on the map.
The department’s own description ties the deployments to strategic locations, not random fields. Hills above a country club sit in the kind of terrain where dry grass and weeds give fire a ladder. Removing that ladder by mouth is slower than a mower on flat ground, but it reaches places wheels and blades struggle to hold.
No acreage totals, cost figures, or claims of fires avoided appear in the available account. What does appear is a clear operational pattern: load the goats, put them on the slope, and let them reduce the fuel before a spark finds it.
California’s wildfire problem is not solved by a single herd. But when local fire crews keep choosing the same low-tech option for five years running, it is because the animals do a job machines and overtime cannot always match on steep ground.
Common sense still looks like clearing the fuel before the fire starts, even when the crew that does the clearing has four legs and an appetite.
