New state law could spell the end for firefighting goats in the Northstate
SHASTA COUNTY, Calif. — Those four-legged weed-eaters, the goats we've come to know and love during fire season, could be going away.
Goats covering the hillsides in the Northstate—about 300 of them—can devour dry grass and brush to the ground at a rate of about an acre a day.
Tim Arrowsmith owns Western Grazers out of Red Bluff. Several thousand head of goats and he employs six to seven goat herders from Peru and South America.
But a new law, Assembly Bill 1066(AB-1066), would require him to pay them an hourly rate, time and a half, double-time and sleep time.
It adds up to about $14,000 a month.
“We can’t sustain that. They want their jobs; they want to keep their jobs. There’s guys being sent home now because this law has gone into effect. We’re in a drought; goats are leaving the state to find feed,” said Tim Arrowsmith.
Tim says with them being prohibitively expensive, he's got some hard choices to make unless the law is changed by the end of October.
“What it’s going to force us to do is look at selling the goats. And they’ll go to slaughter somewhereat this point, I think, it’s going to start going away, and it could go away really rapidly [with] there being a drought and allI mean, people are selling because they’re in a drought; we’re selling because we’ve got AB-1066 telling us our wages are going to quadruple. So, we’re in a tough spot,” said Tim Arrowsmith.
He's been unsuccessful in finding a state assembly member or senator to carry a bill and that would have to be done by the end of this month.
So...
“If you don’t want the goats to go away, call the governor’s office and say, ‘can you fix this goat herder issue administratively?’” Tim Arrowsmith said.
You can contact the governor's office in any number of ways, but here's the phone number: (916)445-2841, to ask him to administratively include goats as exempt from the hourly wage law.
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