Meet Some Cool Fire-Fighters!
The past couple years have been brutal for wildfires in Oregon; 2020 was bad and 2021 was worse, with hundreds of thousands of acres going up in smoke.
Now a vineyard in Junction City, OR is using animals to prevent fires. Antiquum Farm deploys teams of Katahdin-Dorper crossbred sheep, Kune Kune pigs, goats, and assorted poultry and fowl to eat their way through vegetation that would otherwise dry out, pile up, and become fire fuel.
Owner Stephen Hagen calls this tactic “grazing-based viticulture,” which is sometimes seen in California – another site of brutal fires in recent years – but Antiquum has the first such practice in Oregon.
“After towns in California were wiped out by fires, insurance carriers began redlining entire neighborhoods,” Hagen told the Oregonian, referring to the insurance industry’s refusal to cover a property based on geographical location. “When our former carrier redlined our neighborhood,” Hagen said, “they told me, ‘your home is in an area too prone to wildfires, we’re not insuring it.’”
Hagen began dispatching farm animals into the forest surrounding his vines last summer. He fences off a grazing area, sets up temporary shelters for the animals, and includes Maremma sheepdogs to protect the grazers from predators. “There’s one mountain lion that has to weigh 250 pounds, and it looks like an African lioness,” Hagen says. After an area is cleared, the animals can be relocated to munch through another spot.
The results are evident after less than a year. “We’ve seen an immediate impact. There are cleared areas I never thought I’d be able to walk through. We’ve seen deer, bobcats and all sorts of animals crossing through those areas,” Hagen said.
As predicted by climate change, the frequency and intensity of wildfires will continue to rise in the West. Since it is unlikely humans will reduce dependency on fossil fuels any time soon, preventative measures like strategically placed grazers might be the best we can hope for.
Photo credit: Stephen Hagen
