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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/vienna-most-ecologically-responsible-landfill-pinzgau-goats/>
"On a Sunday in early May, thousands of people from all over Vienna gathered in
the city’s northeastern corner for a day in the sun, enjoying music
performances, candy floss, guided walks around the verdant surroundings, and
the chance to spot a mountain goat called Hellgirl. The location? Austria’s
largest landfill.
Rautenweg has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a gravel pit filled
with untreated waste. While other places struggle with overflowing,
environmentally destructive landfills, Vienna has created one that is in many
respects a net-positive for the environment: It supports biodiversity, has
helped endangered species rebound, heats hundreds of thousands of surrounding
homes, and offers free educational tours of its lush location to boot.
Its most famous residents are a herd of Pinzgau goats such as Hellgirl, a
species of mountain goat from the Salzburg region of Austria that was
critically endangered as recently as the early 1990s. When four of them were
settled at Rautenweg’s “trash mountain” (or “Beag aus Mist” in Viennese) in
1994 to serve as eco-friendly lawnmowers, only around 200 such animals were
left in Austria. Since then, however, around as many kids have been born at the
landfill alone, most of which have subsequently been reintroduced to the wild.
Barring regular health checks and the introduction of a buck at breeding
season, the goats are left to their own devices, free to roam the 150-acre
landfill at their leisure."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
