Since July 1, goat herders have been covered by standard minimum wage and overtime rules, a change that grazing businesses say could make fire-prevention grazing unaffordable in a state desperate to clear brush
The Four-Legged Fire Crew
Drive the hills behind California’s coastal towns in late summer, from the canyons above Malibu to the ridges of the Bay Area, and you may see them: herds of goats moving across the slopes, eating dry grass and brush that would otherwise fuel the next wildfire. Targeted grazing has become one of the state’s more effective, low-tech tools for reducing fire risk, especially near homes and communities where controlled burns are difficult and machinery is impractical. Now that tool is in trouble, because of a change in labour law.
C. Jarrett Dieterle and Shawn Regan of the Manhattan Institute laid out the problem in an opinion piece for Reason headlined California’s war on goats could worsen the wildfire crisis.
What Changed
For decades, herders were exempt from standard minimum wage and overtime rules, because their work involves living with animals around the clock, and applying hourly wage rules to a 24-hour job would make labour costs prohibitive. A 2016 overhaul set an alternative minimum monthly wage for herders, which the authors put at 4,820 dollars. In 2022, the state’s Department of Industrial Relations concluded that the law applied only to sheep herders, not goat herders. Lawmakers then extended the alternative minimum to goat herders, but only until July 1, 2026. Efforts to extend the exemption further stalled in the legislature amid opposition from labour unions.
Since July 1, goat herders in California have been covered by standard minimum wage and overtime rules. Dieterle and Regan estimate that, applied to round-the-clock herding, that could mean around 20,000 dollars a month, or roughly 240,000 dollars a year, per herder, about four times the alternative minimum and close to the governor’s own salary.
The Business Impact
For grazing companies, the arithmetic is stark. Western Grazers, which deploys about 5,000 goats across Northern California, told the authors that the new rules push the annual cost of each herder above 250,000 dollars once room, board and other expenses are included. Owner Tim Arrowsmith said that without a restored exemption, his company would sell its goats for slaughter, close its California operations and likely file for bankruptcy. We can’t sustain that and do fire fuels abatement in the state of California, he said. It’ll be over.
The authors also note that a state study found goat herders report about seven or eight hours of active work per day, highlighting the mismatch between a rule designed for hourly employment and a job that involves long periods of presence rather than continuous labour.
Unintended Consequences
This is a classic case of a well-intentioned rule producing harmful results. The goal of protecting workers from exploitation is legitimate. But applying a one-size-fits-all wage structure to a job with unusual characteristics can eliminate the job entirely. If grazing businesses close, herders lose their work altogether, and California loses a cost-effective tool for wildfire prevention.
The authors warn that California already struggles to clear enough brush and vegetation from fire-prone areas. Governor Gavin Newsom has pledged to accelerate fuel-reduction projects, but progress has been slow. Losing the goats would make that task harder and more expensive, shifting the work to mechanical thinning crews and controlled burns, which come with their own costs, risks and permitting hurdles.
A Pattern Elsewhere
California is not alone in creating obstacles for goat grazing. The authors point to Columbus, Ohio, where a local public employees’ union branch filed a grievance over a city contract with a goat herd to clear poison hemlock at a wastewater plant, arguing that it violated its collective bargaining agreement. When goats become a labour dispute, something has gone wrong with how we think about public problems and private solutions.
There is also the question of who replaces the goats. Mechanical crews cost money, burn fuel and cannot easily reach steep or rocky terrain. Prescribed burns require favourable weather, permits and air quality approvals, and carry their own risks. Goats, by contrast, work slopes that machines cannot, eat invasive plants and leave fertilizer behind.
Lessons From Abroad
Other countries manage herding differently. The authors note that in Australia, larger herds rely on drones and all-terrain vehicles to reduce the number of herders needed. Technology can sometimes reduce labour costs, but it requires capital and scale that smaller California operations may not have, and some practices used abroad come with animal welfare trade-offs. The broader point is that rigid rules can block the experimentation that might find better ways of doing the job.
Fire Season Is Every Season
For coastal communities, the stakes are personal. Wildfires have burned into towns from Malibu to Santa Cruz County, threatening homes, closing highways and choking beaches with smoke. Surfers have paddled out under orange skies and watched hillsides burn from the water. Fuel reduction is not an abstract policy question. It is the difference between a manageable fire and a catastrophe.
California’s lawmakers can fix this. A tailored exemption or alternative wage structure for herders, as existed for decades, would protect workers while keeping grazing viable. Pairing it with standards for living conditions and fair treatment would address legitimate concerns about exploitation. What the state should not do is allow a rigid rule, pushed through without regard to consequences, to send thousands of goats to slaughter while the hills dry out for next year’s fire season. Sometimes the best fire crew does not wear a uniform. It has four legs, a beard and an appetite.