If you saw goats grazing along the riverbank today (Friday) in the middle of Mishawaka, your eyes weren’t playing tricks on you. It's part of the city’s new effort to improve views along the riverwalk.
In addition to ducks and geese, you could hear the sounds of goats starting Friday and continuing over the next month if you stroll Mishawaka’s riverwalk along Wilson Boulevard through Battell Park.
Parks Superintendent Phil Blasko says the city has hired a Fort Wayne-based company called Goats on the Go! Their goats will be eating invasive vegetation like honeysuckle, poison ivy and poison oak.
“A lot of that invasive species have overgrown to the point where you can’t see through and down to the riverbank," Blasko says.
Blasko says the city hopes it will be a new solution to a challenging problem.
“Over the years it’s been very hard for us to manage that riverbank," he says. "We have had companies come out that just come with a very large arm that basically tears up everything. We want to keep the stuff that we want to keep. The Goats on the Go!, they are going to be able to eat all of that invasive species for us and then when they put it down as fertilizer, they won’t be able to grow back because they’ve been digested through their bellies. It helps us also not having to put any fertilizer down on the ground so we’re excited about it.”
