California’s War on Goats Could Worsen the Wildfire Crisis

Wildfire risk just got a lot worse in California, where some of the state’s most effective fire prevention specialists—goats—are under regulatory attack. As of July 1, the state’s standard minimum wage and overtime laws now apply to goat-herding companies, whose animals clear brush and reduce fire danger across the state. The change threatens to sideline these vital firefighters at a time when California can ill afford a setback in wildfire prevention.

For decades, California’s goat and sheep herders have been largely exempt from the state’s wage and overtime rules. This is on account of the round-the-clock lifestyle that herding entails; without such an exemption, labor costs would become prohibitively expensive in the herding occupation.

When California overhauled its wage laws for agricultural workers in 2016, it recognized this reality. The changes ultimately culminated in the Department of Industrial Relations enacting an alternative minimum monthly wage of $4,820 a month for herders. But in 2022, the department clarified that the underlying legislation only applied to sheep herders, leaving goat herders subject to normal wage and overtime rules.

State lawmakers intervened by passing legislation to allow goat herders to be paid the same alternative minimum as sheep herders until July 1, 2026. Now that the exemption has expired, goat herders must be paid according to traditional overtime rules. Given the 24/7 availability required for herding, this means that Golden State goat herders are now set to be paid $20,000 per month, which works out to $240,000 annually. (For comparison, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s salary currently sits at $245,000).

An effort to extend the goat herding exemption beyond 2026 stalled in the state legislature due to opposition from labor unions. Goat-herding businesses have been left scrambling. Western Grazers, a company that deploys roughly 5,000 goats across Northern California, says the new rules push the annual cost of employing each herder above $250,000 once room and board, food, and other expenses are included.

“We can’t sustain that and do fire fuels abatement in the state of California,” owner Tim Arrowsmith told California’s KRCR News. Unless lawmakers restore the exemption by the end of August, he says his company will be forced to sell its goats for slaughter, shut down its California operations, and likely file for bankruptcy.

The quadrupling of goat herders’ labor costs comes with unintended consequences— beyond creating a glut of local chevon. California already struggles to clear enough brush and other vegetation from fire-prone areas. This became painfully clear with the state’s wildfires in recent years. Newsom has since pledged to fast-track critical fuel-reduction projects, but progress has remained slow.

Goats are especially effective near homes and communities where mechanical thinning and controlled burns are more difficult. If goat-herding companies disappear, California will lose one of its most flexible tools for protecting vulnerable communities. “The goats grazing in your neighborhood will disappear, the goats grazing in your cities and municipalities and HOAs, and things like that, they’ll be gone,” Arrowsmith said. “It’ll be over.”

Aside from wildfire risks, it’s worth understanding the labor policy implications of suddenly paying goat herders $240,000 a year. While a job with 24/7 availability might provide a ripe target for labor advocates to argue that workers are chronically underpaid, goat herders report closer to seven or eight hours a day of active work, underscoring the unique nature of the occupation.

If herding wages spike, it’s likely that California goat-herding companies will increasingly seek to mimic herding protocols from environments like Australia. There, goat herds are much larger on average than in America, with farmers using technology like drones and all-terrain vehicles to replace workers, thereby reducing the number of herders needed to maintain a flock. And unlike their American counterparts, Australian ranchers also do not assist the animals during the birthing season, leading to a greater mortality rate for babies.

Organized labor’s war on goats extends beyond California, as well. In Columbus, Ohio, a branch of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees recently filed a grievance against the city for contracting a goat herd to clear overgrown poison hemlock at a wastewater treatment plant. The union claims that the goat subcontract violates its collective bargaining agreement, despite the fact that the vegetation in question is located on a side slope that is unreachable by most human-operated equipment.

This wide-ranging progressive attack on goats is far from academic. In recent years, vegetation management services have become particularly important to the survival of the goat and sheep industry, as meat and wool markets have declined amid cheap imports. If goats are suddenly sidelined as fire prevention and vegetation management specialists, more goat-herding businesses could shutter their operations.

California’s wildfire problem was already severe before the state began regulating goat-herding companies out of business. Unless lawmakers restore the wage exemption, one of California’s most effective fuel-reduction tools will disappear with them.