Diversity Landworks in the news
Since 2017, Diversity Landworks has been featured in newspapers, magazines, and broadcast news outlets across Minnesota and Wisconsin. From the Star Tribune to CBS Minnesota to Pacific Standard, journalists have covered Kyle Johnson and Tim Taylor's pioneering work in prescribed goat grazing and ecological restoration.
Buckthorn-eating goats to debut in Minneapolis parks
Minnesota's largest newspaper covered the debut of Diversity Landworks' goat herd at Cedar Lake Park in Minneapolis — the first time the city had enlisted goats to manage invasive species without herbicides.
Grazing Goats To Help Mow Invasive Species In Minneapolis Parks
Kyle Johnson and his herd made the news when the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board enlisted Diversity Landworks to graze buckthorn at Theodore Wirth Regional Park — one of the first programs of its kind in the Twin Cities.
Minneapolis jumps on the goat train for fighting invasive species
Minnesota Public Radio News covered Diversity Landworks' expanding work with Twin Cities municipalities, reporting on the company's contract to bring 80 does and their kids to graze a six-acre site near Cedar Lake East Beach in Minneapolis. The coverage highlights owner Kyle Johnson's straightforward explanation of why prescribed grazing works: "It really makes sense to return animals to the landscape to defoliate those species and do it herbicide-free. With enough defoliation, plants like buckthorn, multiflora rose and honeysuckle will just run out of carbohydrate reserves in their roots and die."
DNR needed help managing prairies on steep hillsides. They called on goats.
Summary: A reporter accompanies Kyle Johnson to the Wetbark prairie bluff restoration area in Houston County, where Diversity Landworks is working alongside the Minnesota DNR to restore steep bluff prairies using a combination of mechanical clearing and prescribed goat grazing.
Our Not-So-Secret Weapon in the Fight Against Invasive Species – Goats!
Conservation nonprofit Great River Greening has deployed herds of browsing goats at Lebanon Hills Regional Park in Eagan and Schwarz Pond Park in Rosemount, contracting with Diversity Landworks to help remove invasive species and restore native plant communities at both sites. As Great River Greening explains, goats are a natural, environmentally friendly option uniquely suited for the work — targeting the tips, buds, and bark of invasive shrubs like buckthorn, opening up the understory and giving native plants room to thrive.
GOATS AT WORK: River Bend Nature Center uses goats to battle invasive buckthorn
River Bend Nature Center in Faribault has brought in a new tool in its 45-year battle against buckthorn: goats. After years of relying on chainsaws, hand-pulling, and herbicide, the nature center turned to Diversity Landworks and its herd of hungry browsers to tackle the persistent invasive. "Goats, in restoration terms, have been a bit more recent as a tool," said Associate Director of Environmental Stewardship Brittany Smith, noting that research from the University of Minnesota and other sources convinced them to give prescribed grazing a try.
'Superhero' goat herd mitigates invasive weeds, wildfire risk
When Sofia Greenberg came to Minnesota to work with Diversity Landworks, she witnessed firsthand what a herd of well-managed goats could do for a degraded landscape. "I watched what the goats could do in terms of restoring the native ecology, and I was pretty amazed by it," she told the Taos News. That experience inspired her to co-found Chamisa Goatworks in northern New Mexico, bringing prescribed goat browsing to a region where no one was doing it yet. It's a testament to the ripple effect of Diversity Landworks' pioneering work — not just restoring landscapes, but inspiring a new generation of regenerative land managers across the country
Goats restore rare ‘goat prairie’ at Freedom Park
This fall, a herd of 47 goats from Diversity Landworks brought something entirely new to Freedom Park on the bluffs above the St. Croix River in Prescott, Wisconsin — and visitors couldn't get enough of it. Contracted through Great River Greening, the goats spent eight days working the bluffside, ignoring the native oaks while making short work of invasive buckthorn, black locust, and sumac. "This is probably the most exciting thing that's happened here at the park all year," said Israel Haas, Executive Director of the Great River Road Visitor and Learning Center. Beyond invasive species control, the herd enriched the soil with manure, pressed freshly-seeded native grasses into the ground with their hooves, and drew a steady stream of curious onlookers.