Have Ewe Herd? There Are Sheep on Governors Island — and We Paid Them a Visit!
July 30, 2024
Visitors to Governors Island, a.k.a. Lower Manhattan’s unofficial backyard, tend to stick to the landmarked northern part of the island, where you’ll find many of its amusements and events. But if you head a little deeper into the center of the island to explore its lush green pastures, you’ll find five special summer visitors: Evening, Chad, Philip Aries, Bowie and Jupiter. They’re not here for the spa or the scenic bike rides — they’re sheep with a job to do.
Since 2021, the Trust for Governors Island has facilitated the four-legged flock to act as the island’s wooly lawn mowers, feasting on invasive plant species like phragmites, bindweed and mugwort. In the four years since the program started, the sheep have eaten roughly 14.5 acres worth of invasive plants that would otherwise crowd out native species and compromise the ecosystem’s natural heterogeneity.
“The sheep are an integral part of our ecological horticultural practices here,” Nicole Fogarty, senior manager, marketing and communications and data officer at the Trust for Governors Island, told us.
Sheep are more qualified for this plant-eating than goats or other animals, as sheep prefer the invasive herbaceous plants. Goats, meanwhile, will devour anything they can get their hooves on, including tree bark — relatable, but not ideal for the horticulture team’s purposes. The flock of five work roughly from May through September, depending on the weather and their appetites. During this period, the Trust’s 12-person horticulture team herds the sheep between three areas and across multiple acres, including the idyllic Hammock Grove, a grassy meadow with picturesque pathways and dotted with its namesake red canvas beds. Fogarty says all the munching saves the team many, many hours of de-weeding.
“It takes a long time dealing with these weeds,” Fogarty said. “[Our horticulture team experts] have multiple degrees…they are experts in their field and their time is much better spent actually planning and caring for these species rather than just mowing weeds.”
Marina Belotserkovskaya, ecological restoration technician at the Trust for Governors Island, agrees.
“Seeing how much progress they can make with the mugwort in just one day is astonishing, especially when I compare it to the pace of my own weeding,” she said.
When they conclude their summer plant-eating gig on the island, the sheep live at the Friends of Tivoli Lake Preserve and Farm in Albany. The first year, after they returned to Albany in the fall, their caretakers said they were more aggressive than usual.
“They were city sheep with an ‘I’m walkin here’’ attitude,” Fogarty said.
One of the sheep “is truly like a dog at heart” who loves to be pet, Fogarty said. But, in general, they’re like cats in that they’re sheepish (pun intended) and shy but love their handlers. When we visited them in Hammock Grove, during one of the city’s many heatwaves, they mostly kept to their shaded huts. One poked his head out, stomped a hoof as if to say “do not disturb,” then went back under cover to sit with his friends.
Outside of their work day, the sheep also have social obligations. This summer, the Trust launched a new volunteer program called Sheep Stewards that allows the public to tend to the sheep on weekends (their dedicated handling team works Monday through Friday). The farm manager also comes down from Albany a few times during the summer for herding demonstrations or sheep “meet and greets” in which the public are let into the penned off area to visit the sheep and learn more about ecological horticulture. Fogarty says the program has been “hugely successful.”
When asked to comment on their Governors Island dream job, the sheep said, “We don’t dream of labor.”
Just kidding. They said, “Baa.”
photos: credit Julienne Schaer, the Trust for Governors Island
