The Environmental Impact of Goats: Uprooting the Narrative

Cara Loomis ^1* Carol Kerven ²

• ¹ The Sustainable Fibre Alliance, Mold, United Kingdom
• ² Odessa Centre, Great Wolford, United Kingdom

Every few years an old story resurfaces in the popular media: goats are especially harmful to the environment because they uproot plants, preventing them from regrowing and thus turning grasslands into deserts. The destructive tendencies of goats in these accounts have "unleashed some of the worst dust storms on record" (LA Times 2006), overgrazed Mongolia's "once verdant land" (BBC 2020) and prevented entire ecosystems from growing back (NYT 2009). But what evidence exists to demonstrate that goats are uniquely predisposed to uproot grasses and cause untold environmental damage? When we turn to the scientific literature on goat grazing habits, we find that there is a lack of evidence to support the claim that goats dig up plant roots. This leads us to scrutinise the role goats in causing overgrazing, ecological decline and desertification. What emerges reverses the widely-held view; rather than causing desertification, goats are best equipped to deal with the effects of it. The physiology of goats makes them well-suited to exploiting marginal ecological zones created through changing climate patterns. The final section calls for a revaluation of the goat. Frequently raised by some of the most economically and environmentally marginalised populations, goats offer these communities a degree of food security that is unmatched by other livestock species. What if built into the cost of a cashmere sweater is not environmental decline, but economic support for communities bearing the brunt of shifts in global climate patterns that are out of their control and not of their making?