Cashmere has long been associated with luxury, but that’s not the case anymore with affordably priced cashmere currently saturating markets. While you might consider this a gift, mid-priced chain stores like Banana Republic and Target (who are buying the fiber) are part of a larger sock in the gut to the Mongolese people and the place they call home.

In addition to consumer’s demand for cashmere, the biggest culprit of the Mongolian countryside desertification are the goats themselves – eating roughly 400 square miles of grass a year (including the grass roots).

Ecotextile News reports that this over grazing of the high plains goats, in some instances has resulted in a “desertification of the land,” from nomadic herders looking to make a buck.

“The ever increasing demand in the west for cheap cashmere has encouraged such growth in the goat population so that there are real fears over the ecological balance of the region,” says Ecotextile News.

In the same article, China’s Ministry of Nature and Environment estimated that “grassland is thinning out across 75 percent of this vast country, two thirds the size of Western Europe, while 7 percent is already desert.”

With the Cashmere World Trade Fair taking place November 23-25, a Cashmere Sustainability Conference will encourage attendees on industry and environmental threats – from the fiber to the overgrazing, scouring and dyeing.

Image: Left-Hand

Summer is the season of days at the beach and backyard barbecues. It’s also the season for a chore that many a homeowner is no doubt familiar with – mowing the lawn.

How about keeping a pair of pet wallabies instead?

I know some people, mostly men, who actually enjoy mowing the lawn. (All the better if the lawn is big enough to justify a ride-on mower). Most of us, however, would probably rather not.

Besides, conventional gas-powered lawnmowers are dirty and polluting.

Wallabies not to your fancy? You might try goats. (Google even has goats mowing its lawns.) That said, I’ve been acquainted with a few goats in my time and they are obstreperous creatures who will eat anything, so forget having a garden or hanging clothes outside to dry. Perhaps you’d better stick with wallabies.

The creatures are just like a kangaroo, only smaller and less aggressive. In Britain, wallabies are an increasingly popular backyard pet. They are gentle, intelligent and, you guessed it, they keep the lawn trim.

Wallabies are sociable creatures so they are sold in pairs and breeders say that they are no more difficult to keep than rabbits.

Unlike cattle, which are blamed for a significant percentage of the world’s greenhouse emissions in the form of methane-filled burps and farts, wallabies and other marsupials possess rather more genteel digestive systems.

Alternatively, why not have a meadow or patch of prairie instead of a lawn? Lawns require a lot of water to keep them green (green in colour, that is), especially in hot climates.

You can’t just stop mowing and watering or the grass will turn brown and the yard will quickly become infested with weeds. But with the right ground work, you can have wildflowers and native grasses instead, surviving on natural rainfall and providing valuable habitat for birds, bugs, frogs and small mammals.

Images: law_keven, Martin Pettitt

Got goats? If not, there’s a family-owned and operated grazing service in Orinda, California that will deliver to you a South American shepherd, Border Collie and trained herd to graze your ranch or yard. Used primarily for fuel mitigation, star thistle eradication and reducing pesky hillside brush, the livestock comes in a variety of breeds to munch sites as expansive as 30,000 acre ranches.

The Goats R Us business was bred by Terri (above) and Egon Oyarzun, who operate the ranch with the help of their animal-loving 13-year-old son, Zephyr.

Egon was born and raised in rural Southern Chile, where he got his training by helping his father break oxen to pull carts.

The family recruits shepherds from South America who live with the animals on the grazing property in a self-contained travel trailer and pens. The hired hands often work on horseback to reduce the use of motor vehicles on the range.

Portable electric fencing helps contain Billy and his friends – agricultural workers who, unlike much of the American workforce, don’t suffer from age discrimination and are given super retirement benefits.

The old goats are never sold and are invited to picnic and roam the hills of the company’s own ranch. The seniors are vaccinated and wormed three times a year. Hey, where do I sign up?

There’s also a training program for the new recruits. Every winter when a pre-selected group of nannies gives birth, the babies are raised with the herd where they learn to work with the doggies. Angora goats are the primary stock because of their thick mohair and hardiness which fair well in the chilly northern California winters.

Perhaps the smartest in the pack are the keen-eyed Border Collies, raised and trained by the Goats R US team to respond to calls, whistles and hand signals. The company says each shepherd and his dog team develop their own unique communication style and create a bond that helps them do get that job done, whether “moving goats through a wide grassland or the busy, narrow streets of San Francisco.”