The Long Run · Episode 5 of 7 · 24 min
Enter the Goat: The Honest Case for Grazing on Public Land
Sometimes a hoof on the land is a tool, not a toll. The episode builds the strongest case for grazing: goats and sheep cutting wildfire fuel and knocking back weeds, and ranches keeping open country from being paved. It then draws the line the series turns on, that intensive, paid targeted grazing is not the cheap, extensive permit system covering most of the public range.
Who's who
- Gifford Pinchot+12 more episodesFirst Chief of the Forest Service; friendly witness for public-good tools
- Karen LaunchbaughEditor of the 2006 handbook Targeted Grazing
Where it happens
- Sidney, MontanaBase of the TEAM Leafy Spurge program
- Miles City, MontanaHome of the ARS Fort Keogh range laboratory
- Santa Rosa, CaliforniaDeployed 1,000-plus goats for fuel reduction in 2025
- Great Basin+1 more episodeFive BLM districts opened to targeted grazing review in 2019
Timeline
- 1997-2005TEAM Leafy Spurge pairs flea beetles with sheep and goat grazing
- 2006Targeted Grazing handbook published and circulated by the BLM
- 2019BLM Nevada opens a review of targeted grazing of invasive annual grasses
- 2021A 70-study synthesis of targeted grazing efficacy is published
- June 2025Santa Rosa deploys 1,000-plus goats across 130 acres
- March 2026Interior-Agriculture memorandum affirms no net loss of grazing units
Still debated
The best synthesis finds targeted grazing's weed suppression is real but fades within about a year unless repeated, and species-specific evidence is thin. How much federal land would be developed if permits ended is uncertain, and artificial water cuts both ways for wildlife.
← PreviousCheatgrass and the New Fire: How Grazing Rewired the West's WildfiresNext →Grazing in the Climate Era: The Carbon Cost of Public-Land Cattle
Connected episodes in other series
The Fight Over FishFishing for a Solution · Episode 1Also features Gifford Pinchot
How One Arizona Hillside Built Modern ForestryGround Truth: Forest Service Research · Episode 1Also features Gifford Pinchot
How America Made Indigenous Fire a Crime, and Its ReturnThe Fire This Time · Episode 3Also features Gifford Pinchot
Why the U.S. Forest Service Loses Money Selling Public TimberThe Uncosted West · Episode 9Also features Gifford Pinchot