NEVER mind the iPod, the surprise hit of the Christmas shopping season was the goat.

Tens of thousands of people saw pictures of cute, floppy-eared kids in charity advertisements, shunned the material goods and bought goats for poor families in Africa. “No ifs or butts, a goat is a great gift,” the Oxfam Unwrapped website said. “You start with one and end up with a herd.”

But the fashion for sponsoring goats has angered a leading environmental charity, which says that it is short-sighted and will damage farmland and create, not alleviate, poverty. The World Land Trust (WLT), which lists Sir David Attenborough as its main patron, says that charities such as Oxfam and Christian Aid have forgotten that goats eat everything. Camels, which Oxfam offers for £95, were even more destructive, the charity said.

Although it is acknowledged that the charities have the best intention, they are accused of ignorance of the “devastating environmental impact” of the promotion of goat farming. John Burton, chief executive of WLT, said: “It doesn’t look as if they have thought this scheme through properly. It seems as if they don’t understand the connection between habitat degradation and poverty.”

The WLT said that 95 per cent of goats lived in developing countries in Africa and Asia, and that the number in these countries had increased by 50 per cent in the past 15 years. In contrast, in the 1960s, European governments subsidised slaughter programmes to save Mediterranean farmland.

The trust said that a 1995 study estimated the annual loss of land productivity due to goats and other grazing animals to be $7 billion in Africa and and $8.3 billion in Asia. Mr Burton said: “If goats are given to such countries, not only will environmental damage increase but the poverty levels of the people that farm the goats will increase also.

“The goat campaign may be a pleasing gift and a short-term fix for milk and meat, but in the long term the quality of life for these people will slowly be reduced with devastating effect.”

Christian Aid denied that it was flooding Africa with unwanted goats. “We work with local partner organisations which are better able to understand their own problems and we supply them with what they want,” a spokeswoman said.

An Oxfam spokeswoman said: “Livestock is only provided to communities where livestock keeping is a traditional or essential part of their way of life, and appropriate to the natural environment.”

BESTSELLERS

1 Providing a fishing net in Mali, above, £35

2 Water tap in Bolivia, £24

3 Two months’ salary for teacher in India, £30

4 Two sheep in Senegal, £80

5 Mosquito nets for an Angolan family, £11

(Source: Christian Aid)

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