Fire Season: The Goat Fire
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Fire season is one of the seasons on our goat calendar. There is no preventing it, only preparing. Some fires are accidents, caused by harvesting equipment or human negligence. Many are natural, originating from lightning strikes. Fire is especially dangerous in canyons because they create draw funnels, making it travel quickly and difficult to extinguish. That is precisely why we have goats in the canyon — to manage the understory and reduce the fuel for fire.
The Goat Fire wasn’t the official name of the August 12, 2024, fire on the fire maps, but it’s what the firefighters called it in the sandbox. Earl Watters, the Chinook helicopter pilot, had a route over our pasture with his water bucket to fight the fire on the rim of the East Canyon. After the fires, the teams train on mock-ups in a sandbox, staging positions, seats, tankers, helicopters, and ground personnel. Last fire season, they had plenty of sandbox models to learn from. One sandbox featured a large goat that resembled Larry the Wonder Goat to represent our herd. Earl and his team are local heroes.
On an ordinary day, returning from town, I noticed a growing plume of smoke in the distance, in the area of the ranch. With each turn, instead of growing distant, the plume was bigger and closer. Winding up the road to the ranch, I could see the flames moving down the ridge to our tree line in the East Canyon. It was in our neighbor’s crop.
Last summer, our phones buzzed regularly with evacuation notices. With a herd our size, evacuation is not an option; we must shelter in place. Not only would it take a few semis to move the herd, but there is nowhere to take them. Goats require different fencing than cattle, and our area has very few ranches — it’s mostly crop land. We must care for them here, on the rim of the canyon, regardless of where the fire is.
The goats “learn to return” from the canyon to the rim when we call from the time they are babies. We can close the rim pastures for safety. The goat toys on the rim are concrete or metal, and the fences are metal. All of our buildings are metal, and the rim of the canyon is kept clear of vegetation as defensible space. It isn’t pretty, but it is essential.
The farmers worked furiously to cut a firebreak in the crop to turn the fire back from the trees. Then the wind picked up. The wind is always a wild card. Sometimes it helps if it turns the fire back on itself, and sometimes it makes the fire explode. This time, the wind turned the fire back, and it moved into the next slope, but it was still working into the trees. They brought in aerial support immediately — helicopters — Earl in the Chinook.
Aerial support also has a scouting plane, so the sky was busy. A busy sky is frightening for the goats, as we have aerial predators — hawks and eagles. To them, planes are loud, enormous predators. The goats and LGDs were frantic, running back and forth across the pasture. We couldn’t help in the field, so we sat with them, talked to them, scratched them, and reassured them that we knew everything that was happening. It is amazing how a trusted presence will calm them, as long as that presence is also calm, which isn’t always easy. With us there, the goats stopped running and watched. The LGDs continued to bark, cautioning the planes not to land. Earl, the helicopter pilot, in the midst of his efforts to fight the fire, also noticed the goats’ reaction on the ground and altered his flight path, offering the frightened herd some relief.
It wasn’t the only fire we had last summer.
On July 24th, we were down in the canyon at the south fork when a storm came up. We saw a series of lightning strikes start two wildfires across the canyon in a dry wheat field. We could see the flames and hightailed it out of the canyon and back to the rim to call 911. By the time we got up, the plumes of smoke had risen significantly. We were so grateful that the goats were already on the rim. These fires did not seem threatening, but you never know. We all have WatchDuty (a scanner for fires) on our phones. When the storm let up, Dale went to pick up hay. After dropping him off, I went home. I had left the water on in the garden, and needed to shut it off. The lightning didn’t start two fires, but three, and the third one was in the West Canyon, on the ranch. We wouldn’t have caught it as early had it not been for the garden…we called 911 again.
When the prepare to evacuate notice is issued, we put hay out and fill all the troughs. We aren’t going anywhere. During the summer, we have small troughs on floats, but when there’s a fire, the large troughs are filled. Loss of power means no well pump for water. The troughs won’t auto-fill. For that reason, we do have a propane generator. If the propane tank is full, it can last about two days to keep the well and power for the electric fencing operating. An extended outage would need to be carefully managed in order to have water available.
The fire crew set up their command center in our front yard, where it was easy to see the fire’s progress and guide the teams in the canyon. Wind was forecast for the next day. If it wasn’t controlled quickly, there might be no controlling it. It could burn the whole canyon. The firefighters worked through the night and all morning. We could hear the chainsaws echo, and the ground team shouting over the saws. We checked the goats regularly; they were growing accustomed to the unfamiliar sounds in the canyon and felt safe in the rim pastures. By midday, it was considered contained.
We learned that the Gwen Fire was one of the two plumes we had seen earlier. It started in the canyon to the west of us at the same time as ours…but the wind caught it before it was controlled. It closed two highways and evacuated several towns. It became two fires, crossing the highway and two rivers. At night, the southern skyline over the ranch was orange with fire. They couldn’t get ahead of it. Most of the firefighters in our area are volunteers. They were stretched thin and exhausted, with fires on all fronts and no breaks between them. In the picture, all of these fires were within ten miles. We watched the Gwen Fire burn for 11 days, 28,220 acres. It progressed south, away from the ranch. Several other fires started the same day, including those that had been contained, and more that hadn’t been posted on the map yet. For us, it was more than a little unsettling when the distance to the fire was measured in thousands of feet, and even more so when you could hear the firefighters on the ground at the front line. These fires came on the heels of the Texas Ridge fire ten miles south of us, which burned 1,500 acres from July 15, 2024, to July 25, 2024.
Care for our herd extends beyond the fires. We’re impacted by smoke from all the fires around us. The alveoli in the lungs can be affected for 4 to 6 weeks after the smoke clears. We refrain from any stressful activities during this window of fire season to protect our stock. We empty and fill the water tanks regularly to remove any soot from the smoke that has settled. We keep food, water, and shelter close together, to minimize herd activity, and don’t move the herd, or open the canyon for foraging until the air quality is safe.
Whether you live in wildfire zones and deal with fire season or not, a fire emergency plan is critical for the safety of your herd. A barn or house fire could impact their space. When faced with flames, both you and your goats will panic. If your plan is evacuation, many details must be considered well in advance of an emergency. If evacuation isn’t an option, work with your local fire station on a plan to create defensible space. While it’s difficult to remain calm during an emergency, having a plan to follow helps to stay focused to ensure the well-being of your goats.
Karen Kopf and her husband, Dale, own Kopf Canyon Ranch in Troy, Idaho. They raise Kiko goats, enjoy “goating” together, and helping others goat. You can learn more about them at Kopf Canyon Ranch on Facebook or kikogoats.org
Originally published in the July 1, 2025, digital issue
