Goat Herd as Ecosystem Reclamation Tool – Profile in Land and Management

By Kevin Alexander Watt

As part of our Profiles in Land and Management series, this month we share the successful land regeneration work of Goat Green, a contract grazing company that using planned grazing and 1,500 goats to restore ecological health to lands where oil wells and pipelines once operated. 

For several years, Chevron had tried to reclaim former industrial sites through repeated applications of herbicides and planted grasses.  After several costly but failed attempts, they turned to Goat Green and a herd of goats to eat weeds, restore native vegetation and stabilize soil health.

The goats, enclosed in 1-acre paddocks with portable electric fencing and moved up to 20 times per day, were a surprising success.  Over a 10 year period that followed the initial pilot, Goat Green grazed nearly a million acres in Wyoming and Colorado for Chevron.

To read more of this profile, please click here.