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Urban Goat Herd Gets A New, Temporary Home

caption: Belmont Goats check out the snow at their current home. Thanks to Portland Development Commission, the herd will move to another Southeast Portland neighborhood, Lents, an urban renewal area.
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Belmont Goats check out the snow at their current home. Thanks to Portland Development Commission, the herd will move to another Southeast Portland neighborhood, Lents, an urban renewal area.
Courtesy of The Belmont Goats

A beloved urban goat herd in Portland has found a temporary new home in the city.

Caretaker Christopher Frankonis confirmed the herd — dubbed “The Belmont Goats” in honor of their original home in inner Southeast Portland — will move to the Lents neighborhood, also in Southeast Portland.

Willamette Week writes:

The (Portland Development Commission) has agreed to locate the new goat pasture for at least one year at 9316 SE Woodstock Ave. -— a vacant field next to Interstate 205 -— and to work with the goats’ owners to move the herd to another vacant lot at Southeast 91st Avenue and Foster Road in the summer, when that property hosts the Lents Farmers Market.

The plan is one of three community projects selected to temporarily use Portland Development Commission-owned vacant lots in the Lents Urban Renewal Area.

As we reported earlier, the herd is being forced to move because “landowner and developer Killian Pacific plans to break ground next year on a new retail and apartment building at the site.”

Originally, the goats were brought in as an eco-friendly way to control grass on the lot. The herd then caught the imagination of passersby and have become popular characters in the neighborhood and beyond. (Yes, you can even follow The Belmont Goats on all kinds of social media from Facebook to Instagram to Twitter to Tumblr.)

The caretaker-owners knew the herd would eventually have to move, so there were no hard feelings. The landowners recently gave the group an extension on the deadline for the move to later this month.

Frankonis wouldn’t comment on plans beyond the temporary relocation. But the group is working towards becoming a non-profit organization to continue to care for the herd.

Read: Waypoints Blog's previous coverage of fish hatchery in Puget Sound.

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