Lifestyle

Meet the hard-working goats cleaning up Staten Island

As visitors gaze out from the overlook in Staten Island’s Fort Wadsworth at the view of New York City’s harbor, they’re often greeted by an unexpected sight: a kind goat staring back at them from just over a fence.

Big Mama, as the nearly 150-pound alpha female white-haired goat is known, patrols the steep ridge of the Overlook with her 17-member herd. She often greets the local families, who line the edge of the fence in the summer as much to ogle the sight of a group of goats grazing a Staten Island park as to see the vistas of Manhattan’s downtown, with a wave of her head.

“It’s calming and peaceful to watch them,” says JoAnne Kopycinski, 54, of the Great Kills neighborhood on Staten Island, who bikes 16 miles round-trip to visit the goats each weekend with her husband.

As prey animals, the goats prefer settling in to the very top of the hill to rest. A pair of young twin sister Nubian goats with stripes of tan, black and white — Oreo and Brooklyn — playfully butt heads, unperturbed by the audience.

The goats patrol around the steep hills near Fort Wadsworth and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.Christian Johnston

The goats aren’t just there to take in the view, though. They’re there to work. For the past seven summers, the National Park Service, which manages Fort Wadsworth, a former military station dating back to the American Revolution, has hired Larry Cihanek and his “Green Goats” from Rhinebeck, NY, to clear out the thick weeds that grow up along the hill.

“The goats manage the vegetation, so people can actually see things like the Statue of Liberty,” says Kathy Garofalo, a recreation specialist and teacher with the Park Service who also sees to the goats day to day.

The goats are the ideal mowers for the steep, uneven terrain, thanks to their hearty hooves and pruning shear-like mouths, says Cihanek.

A self-described ex “Mad Men” exec-turned goat herder who says he rakes in six figures with his goats, Cihanek expects to double his total herd to about 250 next year.

His goats have cleared cemeteries, college campuses and even industrial waste sites across New York and as far away as the Philadelphia area.

Larry Cihanek with Park Services ranger Kathy Garofalo.Christian Johnston

The 18-goat herd on Staten Island is led by the almost 10-year-old half-Nubian, half-Boer Big Mama who maintains her status through “tenacity” and seniority after working the ridge for all seven years, according to Cihanek. Every morning from July through mid-October, the goats set out with the sunrise and get to work, nibbling away at a 5-acre plot. Their main target is Japanese knotweed, an invasive species with a bamboo-like stem that has taken over the slope, reaching 10 feet high in places. Luckily, it’s one of their favorite treats.

Cihanek’s 11-year-old son Jordan sometimes helps his father with the goats.Christian Johnston

“They’re like kids in a candy store. They eat their favorite things first, and then they work their way down to the spinach,” says Cihanek. “But by and large, if it’s green, they’ll eat it.”

The goats spend most of the day eating, consuming about 20 to 25 percent of their body weight, breaking for a siesta in the afternoon, and bedding down among the vegetation with sunset, explains Cihanek. They might graze for a half-hour and then spend two hours just regurgitating and rechewing their finds, which work through the goat’s four-chamber stomach.

Cihanek’s goats are all bottle-fed from birth and many are ex-pets surrendered by owners, making the already docile animals even friendlier. “They’re here to work for us, but we don’t consider them livestock,” says Garofalo, petting a baby goat nuzzling her leg. “They’re our pets.”