- This is a golden opportunity for anyone who wants a free goat.
The Italian island of Alicudi is a true rural Mediterranean paradise. Visiting the island is like traveling back hundreds of years.
There are no hotels or modern roads and transportation is handled by either your own feet or a donkey. Additionally, there are goats.
Way too many goats.
Over the last couple of decades, Alicudi has become completely overrun by wandering, half-tame goats. There are so many of them that they’re causing damage to the island’s buildings and threaten to strip it of all plant life.
It’s become obvious that the goats can’t stay, but the locals also don’t have the heart to simply slaughter the herd. To resolve the problem, the local authorities have put in place an unusual program.
If you can catch one or more of the goats, you can keep them. They’re yours — do with them as you please, just get them off Alicudi.
So, if you’ve ever wanted a free goat, you’d better start buying tickets to Alicudi. You’ll never get a chance like this again.
A Goat per Person
Alicudi is a tiny two-square-mile island, sitting in the Mediterranean some 36 miles off the northern coast of Sicily. Goats aren’t exactly famed for their swimming abilities, so you can probably guess they didn’t get on the island on their own.
In fact, they haven’t even been on Alicudi for all that long. According to Sicilian authorities, an Alicudi farmer shipped them over in the early 2000s, intending to start a farm.
His enterprise went under, however, and he set simply the animals free.
Yet, the locals didn’t mind at first. The goats were free to roam the island and graze on the volcanic cliffs, becoming a famous tourist attraction for the island.
Alicudi authorities even calculated the number of goats the island could sustain. The number came to around 100 — one goat per local resident.
The Birth of the Herd
The goats, however, do not care about sustainability calculations or statistics. With no natural predators and friendly locals, they were free to breed.
And breed, and breed, and breed.
Today, there are at least 600 goats on Alicudi. Some estimates, however, put the number closer to 800.
The animals vastly outnumber humans on the island and are causing all manner of damage and mayhem.
“They move around in packs and cause damage, there are just too many of them,” Gloria, the owner of Golden Cafe Noir in the Port of Alicudi, told The Guardian.
Reportedly, the goats have found their way into homes, where they’ve wrecked furniture and other personal property. They like to climb on Alicudi’s old stone walls, which then collapse under their weight.
But the greatest threat is to the island’s vegetation. After all, the up to 800 goats all need to eat.
They’ve stripped gardens, parks, hills, fields, and pretty much everything else they manage to get into clean of plants. If this goes on, they might leave Alicudi a barren hunk of rock sticking out of the sea.
“There needs to be a solution as the threat to the island’s vegetation is serious. There should have been an intervention 10 years ago,” said Paolo Lo Cascio, an ex-councilor on the island.
Grab Your Goat
Well, the local authorities have come up with a solution. Mayor Riccardo Gullo has announced that the goats are up for grabs.
They’re free. Just tell the local authorities that you intend to grab one, or 20, and take them with you.
“We absolutely do not want to even consider culling the animals, so we are encouraging the idea of giving them away,” said Gullo.
“Anyone can make a request for a goat, it doesn’t have to be a farmer, and there are no restrictions on numbers.”
The Alicudi authorities don’t even care what you do with the goats. Sure, they’d prefer if they went to live a happy, long life on a peaceful farm — but if they end up in a stew, so be it.
That said, there are a couple of catches in the offer. Although the goats themselves are free, you do need a permit from the island council that costs around $17 per goat.
Still, that’s not a bad deal at all.
The second catch is that you have to, well, catch and transport the goats off the island. In other words, you’d better know how to wrestle a goat and have a big enough boat to load them on.
For these reasons, some locals are skeptical about the council’s grab-a-goat plan. Yet, Gullo says there has been significant interest in the scheme.
“We have already had several phone calls, including from a farmer on Vulcano island who would like to take several goats as, among other things, he produces ricotta cheese, which is much appreciated,” the mayor said.
The goat adoption program was set to expire on April 10, but Gullo says he will keep extending the deadline until Alicudi is free of excess goats.