A herd of goats has taken over a hillside in Pittsburgh's Frick Park, chewing through invasive vegetation. The animals arrived Friday morning at the Frick Environmental Center as part of an ongoing ecological restoration project on Clayton Hill, resuming a job they have handled on and off for the better part of a decade.
The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy and Allegheny GoatScape partnered Friday to bring the herd to Frick Park to clear invasive vegetation, according to a report from Yahoo News. The two organizations have worked together for nearly a decade, using goat grazing as a chemical-free way to strip out nonnative plants that have taken hold on the hillside. CBS News Pittsburgh reported that a Friday arrival in 2022 marked the fifth consecutive year the goats had taken over the park to resume their grazing duties.
What the Goats Are Eating This Time
This round of grazing is targeting a specific lineup of unwanted plants, including amur honeysuckle, multiflora rose, border privet and porcelainberry, the same report noted. The herd is expected to cover roughly two acres of Clayton Hill as it works through the tangled brush. Sources differed slightly on exactly how long the goats will stick around this time: the Yahoo report described the stay as approximately three to four weeks, while CBS News Pittsburgh reported the animals will remain for about a month before being brought back at the end of September.
One acre of the current grazing footprint sits inside a newly built deer exclosure, a fenced-off zone meant to support both environmental education and ecological restoration. Once the goats have cleared enough ground, the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy plans to replant the area with native trees and shrubs this fall, per the CBS News Pittsburgh report. High School Urban Ecostewards are expected to plant approximately 100 native trees and shrubs inside that exclosure later this season, according to the Yahoo News account.
Building on Years of Restoration Work
The new exclosure brings the total protected restoration area at Clayton Hill to approximately 4.4 acres, the outlet reported. That figure builds on previous restoration work at the site, which cleared roughly 3.4 acres of dense vegetation, established earlier deer protection and added thousands of native trees and shrubs over the years, per the same account.
The goats are especially useful on terrain that is tough for city crews to reach and maintain by hand. As the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy put it, “With the goats efficiently and easily maneuvering over difficult terrain, it is the perfect management tool for our invasive plant problem.” The conservancy noted that Allegheny GoatScape is also working on roughly 20 other invasive-species projects on city land beyond Frick Park.
Tracking the Results
The Clayton Hill project is part of a broader partnership between the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, with University of Pittsburgh researchers also involved in monitoring the goats' effects on local wildlife. According to the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy's Clayton Hill Restoration page, the success of the project will be tracked by monitoring changes to the plant and bird communities on the hill.
The goats got to work on the hillside, creating the kind of scene that has become a familiar late-summer ritual for park visitors. Goat-powered land management isn't unique to Pittsburgh; the National Park Service has used the same approach to treat invasive plants at Thurmond, and officials in Alexandria, Virginia, have described goat grazing as a sustainable, environmentally friendly way to manage invasive species. In Frick Park, the goat herd grazing at Clayton Hill after its September 18, 2026 arrival is expected to remain for approximately three to four weeks, extending beyond September 30.
