A herd of goats arrived at Wellesley’s Boulder Brook Reservation by goatmobile on Wednesday and stealthily worked through Friday to help restore woodlands destroyed by a property manager’s workers behind a Weston resident’s home. The notorious 2010 incident involved about 100 trees being cut down illegally.
The Wellesley Natural Resources Commission kept this week’s operation quiet, posting signs discouraging trail users to stay off the Rocky Ledges portion of the Boulder Brook Reservation, but making no mention of the special-guest animals. Meanwhile, the goats (from Goat Girls farm in Amherst) munched away on invasive plants — oriental bittersweet, poison ivy, etc. — while contained within fences that were moved around during the week. This enabled the town to get rid of invasives, which have flourished due to the reduction in tree canopy resulting from the tree cutting, without resorting to herbicides.
The town received $140K from the property owner and property manager for the tree-cutting incident, and presumably is using that money to fund the restoration of the area.
Assuming the goats did a good job, we might consider hiring that industrious lot to take over at the Rockland Street bridge project, which has been delayed due to contractual complications, but is still expected to be done by September, according to the Mass Department of Transportation.
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