Every summer, 600 goats sprint near Poplar Beach then graze for a week along the old coastal railroad right of way — clearing the weeds and invasive plants that would otherwise fuel a fire.

Every summer, Poplar Beach in Half Moon Bay gets about 100 spectators and 600 goats. Tuesday was the sprint — the event locals call the Running of the Goats — and the herd, supplied by Star Creek Land Stewards, a woman-owned targeted-grazing outfit out of Los Banos, settled in for roughly a week of work along more than half a mile of the historic coastal railroad right of way.

The Coastside Land Trust, based at 788 Main Street in Half Moon Bay, organizes the effort each year to clear weeds and invasive plant species from the corridor — a stretch where fire risk is not abstract. Fireworks on the coast are part of the calculation. "We have a lot of people that like to come out to the Coastside and blow off fireworks," Bob Rogers of the Coastside Land Trust told ABC7. "And so, their local neighbors are afraid of possibly wildfire with the weeds out here. So that's another reason why we try to do the fire abatement along the historic railroad right of way."

What goats do that a mower cannot: remove biomass entirely rather than rearrange it. "Unlike mowing, where you cut and rearrange the fuel, the goats are able to actually remove that and take the biomass down to lower levels," said Matthew Shapero of Star Creek Land Stewards. The company — Society for Range Management certified, with projects running March through October — operates similar grazing contracts in Marin County, the East Bay, and Santa Cruz.

The fence along the Poplar Beach corridor is electrified. The herd is out there this week. Spectating is welcome; petting is not.