Lockheed Martin’s Waterton Canyon campus sits on 98 acres of rugged foothills near Denver. In August 2024, a 500-acre wildfire came within a mile of the aerospace facility, serving as a wake-up call for corporate decision-makers.
Professional staff members were tasked with finding the best way to mitigate wildfire risk, and the high-tech company turned to a low-tech solution: goats.
Sean Vogel, a member of the Lockheed team, told Colorado Public Radio, “When we evaluated how to best mitigate the fuels that allow the fire to move quickly … goats were really the most logical choice.”
Lockheed Martin hired Goat Green, a company that deploys its 1,200-goat herd to combat noxious weeds and mitigate fire risk in Colorado and Wyoming. Lockheed Martin officials extol the goats’ ability to “vigorously consume fire-prone vegetation like weeds, scrub oak and poisonous plants.”
The Waterton Campus sits at the eastern edge of Pike National Forest, where Forest Service officials continue to pay contractors between $2,000 and $4,000 per acre to cut down trees to reduce wildfire risk. When wildfire returns to the area, the two approaches will make for an interesting comparison.
Photo: Fire-mitigation goats graze a hillside in California to reduce wildfire risk by consuming dry weeds that serve as easily ignited “fine fuels.”
