Galloping Goats and Grazing Management

Happy Holidays! In this episode we talked to Max Wade, the owner of Galloping Goat Grazing, and Michael "Scial" Scialdone, Bosque Project Manager with the Pueblo of Sandia Environment Department. Max and Scial explained how utilizing goats for targeted grazing allows problematic vegetation to be removed, and can help reduce the risk of devastating wildfires in our wildland/urban interfaces. 

Relevant links: Check out Galloping Goat Grazing and the services offered by Max Wade and his herd here: https://www.gallopinggoatgrazing.com/

Read more in High Country News about Scial and Max's work to reduce wildfire risk in New Mexico: https://www.hcn.org/articles/south-wildfire-pueblos-in-new-mexico-turn-to-goats-for-fire-management/

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Transcript

11_3_25_goat_brush_control

Sarah: Welcome to Come Rain or Shine Podcast of the US Geological Survey, Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, or Southwest CASC 

Emile: and supported by New Mexico State University and the University of Arizona. We are your co-hosts, Emile Elias 

Sarah: and Sarah LeRoy. Here we highlight stories to share the most recent advances in science, weather, and climate adaptation and innovative practices to support resilient landscapes and communities.

Emile: We believe that sharing some of the most innovative forward thinking and creative scientific research and adaptation solutions will strengthen our collective ability to respond to even the most challenging impacts of climate change in one of the hottest and driest regions of the world.

Sarah: The contents of this podcast are for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as endorsement for any of the products, technologies, or strategies discussed. 

Emile: Happy holidays from the Come Rain or Shine team. All year, but especially during the holidays, we like to talk with people doing innovative, creative, and fun things to build resilience.

Today we're talking with Max Wade, the owner of Galloping Goats, and Michael Scialdone or Scial with the Pueblo of Sandia Environment department about a project they worked on together. Because of the changes in the Rio Grande's flow regime, along with prolonged drought, the Bosque ecosystem of the Sandia Pueblo has increased fuel loads and higher wildfire risk. Max and Scial used goats to reduce the load and tested how the goats and environment fared under this new management strategy.

Thanks so much for being here. 

Scial: Glad to be here. 

Emile: So Max, we'll start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about your operation and how you began working with goats? 

Max: Absolutely. So, we run about 300 goats right now. At any one time we've got 250 probably in production, and then, we have another herd of 40 or 50 goats that go out on a special assignment on some of the special things that we do.

I'm working with Scial for, since the inception of our grazing program, back in 2020. Somewhere in there right during COVID. We've always had a pumpkin patch. We've always had goats, and that's always been a big part of our business. During COVID, our state shut down. We could not, we were neither a essential business.

We were a mass gathering, so we weren't allowed to do what we were doing, and so it was a time to pivot and figure something else out. And it was actually my daughter and my son-in-law, they said, you know what about renting our goats out for weed control? And my response was, we're not doing anything else, so let's give it a try.

And it's kind of, the rest is history. After that, we worked with a local forest manager, the for the Bernalillo District forest manager, and he introduced us to Scial and looked at a project there on the Sandia Pueblo, and, we've been there ever since. And it's been a fantastic relationship.

Great working with Scial and the Bosque crew and doing a lot of work there. And that's helped us now to grow our grazing business. We work for everybody from the city of Albuquerque, city of Rio Rancho, Los Ranchos. We work for the county, Bernalillo County State Forestry, Sandia Pueblo, and a lot of the different municipal, parks and rec and some arroyo flood control groups now, so the, goats stay busy just about 365 days a year. 

Working on invasive vegetation and fire management. 

Emile: Excellent. So a lot of people have the perception that goats can be a little bit of a handful, and so I'm wondering if either of you have any goat stories or if that's your experience?

Max: Well yeah, they can definitely be a handful. It just depends. I think they're real. They're a lot like our kids, no pun intended, with baby goats. But, you never know what you're gonna get from one day to the next. They're pretty moody. Or they can be. And sometimes, sometimes the way they act today is totally different than the way they acted yesterday.

And, so it's, it's a guessing game a lot of the times, but I think we've figured 'em out well enough to kinda keep 'em heading in the right direction most of the time. 

Emile: Excellent. Yeah, it sounds a little bit like my teenage boys maybe. Uh-huh. Generally wonderful. So Scial, I'm wondering, what are some of the environmental challenges that you were hoping that the goats could help with?

Scial: So let me step back and give a bigger picture of where, the Pueblo of Sandia, the tribal nation that I work for is at. They, as I mentioned, they, their Indian reservation goes from the banks of the Rio Grande up to the Sandia Mountains. And along the stretch that's along the Rio Grande, is in a state of incision where the ded of the river is physically lowering relative to its floodplain. And this is caused 'cause upstream, they put in a large dam called Cochiti Dam. And so the water that comes out of the dam, all the sediment's been taken out of it and stored in the reservoir. And so the, what comes out of the dam is called sediment starved, and therefore it's easy for it to pick up sediment from its own riverbed and move it downstream, which rivers move sediment all the time. 

That's not the problem. The problem is no more sediment's coming in from above because of the reservoir is holding onto it. So you end up with this net loss of sediment from the river bed itself. And so the bed physically degrades or incises relative to its surroundings.

And where Sandia is geographically in that setting, about 40 miles downstream from the dam is the most active point of that incision process, just by the nature of the geography and surrounding geology. And so with the lowering of the riverbed also means you lower your water table.

And so that is the single largest concern I have to deal with is a) it's called a bosque. It's, old Spanish term for woods. And we generally use it as the ecosystem term for the riparian forest along river systems now and here, especially here in the southwest. And the river has now incised to where it can't overbank flood anymore.

So no matter how much water they send out of the dam, when it's spring mettled or flash floods or whatever the case may be, there's not enough water in the system for it to get back up over the banks that it used to get over. And that creates a whole host of problems. namely you get fuels build up, you have nothing to come along and clear out the leaves and the woody debris and everything else that's building up. Get a little generation of new Bosque because of things like cottonwoods and willows and other things we expect in this area respond to overbank flooding and then the lowering of the water table goes hand in hand with the lowering of the river.

They're kind of you know, river level. They're pretty much even with each other and then drop off from the banks of the river. And with the river lowering it also means your water table lowering, meaning the plants that are in the bosque currently, have less access to water. And so they're drier.

And so much of what I do in trying to coordinate work in the bosque, is a endless turnabout about fuel loads, and that's where Max came along at just the right time. When we used to treat the bosque by targeting a non-native species, and we still do that. So you get rid of an elm tree, so you get rid of a non-native species and you reduce the amount of biomass.

So it's kind of a two for one. We've kind of got to a point where we've gone through most of these non-native species, although the elms keep giving us a battle. And there's new, the main four species are Elms, Saltcedar, Russian olive and Tree of heaven and but then we have these other weedy species that come in, most notably tumbleweed, the icon of the Southwest, which ironically is a non-native species.

And then, kochia, which was introduced as something that would grow during the Dust Bowl to at least, you know, provide food for livestock in areas that were no longer growing anything. So you at least had something that it's not a first choice of cows and other grazers, but, they will eat it.

And but when they get into an area that has any kind of bare ground, they'll just sprout and take over. And so having this problem of fuels buildup with leaves and weedy species coming in, was just an endlessly huge concern. And there's no easy way to go about this. You know, we have a small crew and a lot of large land area to cover, so bringing in the goats and just having them knock everything back and eat things down, has just been a lifeline to our efforts to protect the bosque from catastrophic fire.

Emile: Excellent. So Scial, you mentioned that before you brought the goats in, you would, remove non-native species. That was part of your management plan. Were there any other strategies that you tried or was that kind of the primary strategy? 

Scial: That was the primary one when I first got here.

We’ve moved now to where, as between the goats, between our efforts to tackle non-native species, and just general clearing and creating pass and whatnot to through the Bosque. And it's all a balance you gotta do because the vegetation is the habitat for the native critters that you're trying to preserve as well. So it's a balancing act. But moving forward, what's happened now is the Bosque as we see it here in Albuquerque, this kind of endless sea of beautiful large cottonwoods that stretches throughout the middle Rio Grande Valley.

They are responded and grew from floods that date back to the forties and fifties. That’s going on, 70, 80 plus years now, and the average lifespan of a cottonwood is 70 to a hundred years. So we're in this phase where all these cottonwoods that grew up and made this big beautiful cottonwood gallery, are dying back.

But before they do that, they're dropping limbs more and more. Cottonwoods drop limbs as part of their nature. They'll lose a big limb and the tree will still survive for 20 years. But as you get towards the end of their life, it just more and more will start falling. So our fuels problem is now switched from, one of tackling non-native species that we're allowed to grow up really large before the Bosque program was started 30 years ago, to just so much dead and down.

And, so we're trying new initiatives like trying to figure out how do you make use of cottonwood? It's not great for fuel wood or anything, and people don't burn as much as wood in their homes anymore anyways, so we're chipping it and using it on roads. We're, we, the Pueblo does use it as a cultural resource, so we'll provide it for that.

But that just is a, not a large use compared to the scale of how much we have. And then we're doing a new project that, Max, Max’s goats actually tied into 'cause we have an area that was burned in a fire about 12 years ago. And 12 years later, we still can't get anything to grow there but tumbleweeds and kochia and, so despite lots of efforts. So we're trying a new method, which is a soil amendment process.

So we're creating biochar, which is burning this wood. So the charcoal, and when I first learned to biochar, I thought that was the end game. You were just using the charcoal to put nutrients back in the soil. But what I've learned is, the biochar is really just, the charcoal is just everything that's left in the plant after everything else has been burned out.

And it really is a bunch of micro pore spaces on the, on an infinite scale. And so you then inoculate that and where you're going to use Max's manure pile over at his ranch. We're going to go scoop some of it up and bring it over here. So we'll burn wood piles, create the charcoal, inoculate it with the, with the goat poop, and then stir it into the soil.

And then we're going to try another round of seeding and planting and see if we can't jumpstart this area that won't grow any. We've also had Max's goats out in this area prior to this effort, just kind of taming back the weeds and seeing if we could get just the action of the goats and their hooves and their pissing and pooping and all of that to jumpstart this area.

But we didn't get much result for that, but at least now we have a clean slate and we'll start working on this biochar process. 

Emile: Excellent. A lot of creative things happening. So I'm wondering how the Sandia Environment Department learned about Galloping Goats Grazing and decided to try using goats as a management strategy.

So how did it, how did you meet and how did this start? 

Scial: Okay. Well it's as Max said, he was, it was COVID and they, his, pumpkin patch, which is a big fun thing where just what it sounds like it's a fall festival and school kids go in and there's, it's scarecrows and pumpkins galore, and goats of course, and everything.

And it's really a great thing. And, it was COVID. They couldn't have that. So Max connected with  a forester through New Mexico State Forestry, with the idea as he told you that his daughter and son-in-law came up with of let's use it these goats for weed control.

The gentleman's name was Todd Haines and he was very enthusiastic about it. And fortunately Todd and I had connected on previous projects and saw eye to eye on a lot of things. And I don't want to go into too much detail, but they actually tried a different location and there was some challenges, some logistical challenges.

And so Todd got on the phone and said, “Hey, would Sandia be interested in having goats?” And, I've been here going 14, going on 15 years now. Been seeing a lot through how the Sandia Tribal Council operates and their leadership system and everything. And I, there is no other thing that I've brought forward that was enthusiastically approved as quickly as having the goats brought in for, as a method of weed control.

And that, it resonated with them perfectly, that most of 'em are ranchers and farmers. It just kind of really fit into what their mindset and, the idea that we could use a grazing animal to knock back our weeds and try and prevent catastrophic fire in the bosque, like I said, just resonated with them perfectly.

Emile: People love goats. So I can see how that worked out for you. That's excellent. So Max, part of the project was to conduct some research to find out if the goats selectively graze invasive plants. So I'm curious about what you found. 

Max: One of the great things about goats is, there's always this old wives tale what people will say, they'll eat anything, they'll eat 10 cans.

And that's not entirely true. But, goats as a grazing animal will eat. They have a much larger menu in palate than most grazing animals like cattle. And so like Scial was talking about, we started to see that the goats, they love some of these invasive plants like Siberian Elm and Russian olive, even Saltcedar at certain times and kochia like he was talking about. All of those things they reallyare attracted to. But we've also realized that given the opportunity, the goats are gonna eat a much larger and more diverse pallet of vegetation than we would've thought. Tumbleweeds is one of those things that, especially in the wintertime after they've dried up, they're prickly, stickery, dry, woody type material.

But the goats will definitely eat those. Now, if you give 'em the choice, they're like, like our teenage kids, they're going to pick one over the other. With the use of our, we have electric net fencing that we can, it's portable and we can work around certain things. We try to protect a lot of our native species, that we have growing, and if we, enclose them.

The thing about the goats is they're like well, this is what we're eating today, so that sounds good. And they're really great at that. And, they can be moody at times and they're like, today's not our day. And, but tomorrow they change and they go after everything.

It’s been a unique opportunity to see how versatile the goats really are when it comes to eating things. And so I really haven't found anything just yet that they absolutely don't eat. They’re, given the opportunity and the way we do things, they pretty well will tackle just about anything.

Emile: You started to talk about this a little bit, but a big part of the project was targeted gazing, and so I'm curious about how did you target the grazing in a specific area? You started to sort of talk about the fences and then also how did you measure the change in invasive species? 

Max: I think the targeting for us has become such a natural and normal thing it seems normal to us and a no brainer.

We, when we work with Scial and any of our land managers, we go into a project and we're like, well these are the type of plants and vegetation that we want to protect. We have some New Mexico olive and things of those that, that we want to, and some of the Gooding’s willows and things that we want to protect, we want to become part of the new bosque asa a lot of folks talk about as the cottonwoods are dying back. What's it, what's this forest going to look like in the future? So we use that electric net fencing and we can go and identify. Our crews are really good at looking and going and knowing what plants are native, what are non-native.

And by working with somebody like Scial, hey, we really wanna protect this grouping of, New Mexico Olive or whatever it might be. And so we can work our fencing around that. And the goats respect the fencing, so that they don't travel from non-native to native. And it's a, there's a lot…it's a, it's this continual dance that we have as we, we put up fencing and we move goats into an area and then they look at the next area that they're going to go into and put up the fencing for that. 

And it's just this kind of a leapfrog effect where they're eating and while the goats are eating, they're creating a new paddock where we can put the goats into, run 'em in there, pick up the other fencing, and just keep on going. This kind of, this mosaic of grazing pattern through an area that has a lot of non-native and native.

And as far as seeing and measuring, I don't know that we've been able to put anything scientific, that's a whole nother realm of funding and projects  management that, I don't know that Scial or I either have been able to, to tackle just yet. But I think a lot of it is really about just looking at from one year to the next.

We've been fortunate enough to be out on the Sandia Pueblo now for quite, quite a while, over several years. I think, like Scial was saying is a lot of these areas where we had really heavy invasive of tumbleweed and kochia and some, some places of Russian olive and that kind of deal, the continual, the proactive management of those areas on that invasive vegetation has begun to reduce its impact and to where it doesn't.

It does not come back nearly as vigorous as it did the year before. 'cause there's a seed bank that goes back years and years there's no telling how many millions of seeds of these things are in there. But as we were able to get, lessen them and eat 'em down, it gives a chance for native vegetation to grow and start to take hold.

And I think what we see with our type of invasive weeds especially, is that if a stronger native plant moves in, then it starts to quickly push out something like the Russian thistle or, or kochia. And I think that's where we're just seeing it by just experience, from one year to the next.

Emile: Absolutely you're seeing it on the landscape. Sounds good. Well, Scial, you mentioned cottonwoods. And another goal of the project was to create clearings for new growth of cottonwoods and other native species. Of course, this kind of ties in and have you seen new growth of desirable plants after the goats grazed in an area?

Scial: Definitely I've seen, increased growth of desirable plants, but, not cottonwoods. And the biggest reason for that is where we're grazing. As I mentioned before, the rivers incised and they're, the rivers it's been long enough since the incision that the first created new floodplain within the incision.

So it's called inset floodplains. And those areas are already pretty covered with native species because they responded to over big flooding over the past 15 years. Sadly, we're watching some of those areas die back with the drought that's been hitting this area really badly over especially the past year, with the La Nina Winter last year, and then nothing really kicked in from monsoon this year.

And so we watched a lot of the, we've been watching a lot of these younger cottonwoods that were kind of gonna be the next generation of Bosque dying back. But what I have been able to document where Max's goats have been, have just increasing, increases in native grass cover and, or jump starting new grass cover coming in after.

We try and seed after they've been through. And so we have a couple areas like that where that's worked out. In order for the goats to create clearings where we would get new cottonwoods, we would have to be having them graze right down by the river, where the river could overbank.

And, as of, as of now, we don't really have that area. We will coming because of areas we're gonna mow and push over because of the dieback that I just mentioned. So stay tuned. That question is still open to be answered. 

Emile: Seems like there may be some opportunity there in the future. Awesome. Okay. Let's talk a little bit Scial about wildfire as part of the project. So how successful were the goats in reducing the understory, and how might that affect the impacts of wildfire in the area? 

Schial: It's hard to ascertain how much they prevented a wildfire because really what you're trying to do is.

A wildfire really comes down to the luck of the draw of how windy it is the day it started, whatever the cause may be, and then what the surroundings are of where the fire started. So the fire I'm referring to from 12 years ago when,that we're now doing a soil amendment project on and have tied Max’s goats into that. That just happened to, it was an accidental fire on the other side of the river but the wind was not in our favor that day. 

And so the wind quickly pushed the fire over the river. So if the wind's not in your favor, the Rio Grande is not a fire break. You know that we talk a lot about fire break and fuels breaks and trying to do those, and they do serve a purpose, but if the wind's not in your favor, that's just not gonna happen.

And then unfortunately, this one area that's really important to the pueblo was one of the worst areas that was scarred up and burned up. And that's where we're still trying to work and do this soil amendment project. What Max brings along with the goats is just peace of mind that we're doing what we can to prevent that next big wildfire.

The Pueblo being where it's located, as I mentioned between Albuquerque and Bernalillo, actually literally shares boundaries where it's wild pueblo land because the village is in the center of the reservation. So there's a lot of the reservation that's just open a wild country, and then literally on the other side of the fence is somebody's house.

And so both as a liability, but that's your classic wildland urban interface right there. And so we've had Max. Max's goats go in there, not only to knock all the weeds back, but they also, if they're left in an area long enough, they'll start eating up all the leaf litter and everything else that's a fire hazard on the ground because the river no longer can serve that function. That was one of the functions that the river used to do when it over main flooded, it was buried and covered leaves, and so it would reduce your fuels risk. And so, to put a number on it of like how inf effective is it been, is really hard to do.

The number that's more valuable to us is just a little bit of peace of mind that we can hit these border areas and really clean them up, 'cause we're not looking at those for habitat areas. We're looking at 'em for, just pure fuels reduction because we have people living on the other side of the fence.

Whereas in the Bosque it’s more about keeping the non-natives under control till we can get a program in to establish better habitat in there with native plants. And we are, so we're working on that, as we go. All vegetation is fuel, whether it's native or not, but some plants are worse than others in terms of their ability to burn.

And of course, kochia and tumbleweed are just they come in massively and then they quickly dry out. So in terms of being able to spread a fire, that's what you're trying to target is in getting those under, in check so that your net of vegetation can grow out and serve its habitat function.

Emile: Excellent. Well this next question is a question for both of you, and Max mentioned earlier some other work that he's doing and so I'm curious, what advice would you give people that might want to replicate this work with goats in other places? 

Max: I think from a grazer standpoint is really about, and I talked with a lot of folks across the country and outside the country, I have a fairly large following on social media and people are reaching out to me often. 

And I think as from experience, start small with a, the number of goats that you can handle and just get out and start doing this. Every region is different. Every, even within our own state, there are many different regions, different types of vegetation, different types of terrain.

And so all these situations are astronomically different from one to the next. And it's as far as replicating it replicated in theory, but it's about your location, your land managers that you're around, that you're working with, what the goals are for that vegetation management or fire fuels reduction.

Because every one is a little bit different. And I think the key is you just start, you just get your goats, you go out, you find somewhere or somebody that is willing to work with you. And a lot of it is experimentation. We just, every day, I think, we find out with our goats something different that they can do, that we can do with them, how our logistics can be better, how we can haul 'em better, how we can, utilize 'em on the ground more effectively.

And so there's just, there's any number of different variables that we're working with. And so I think the key is you just start and you just go and you just start working on it and see what you're capable of and what your goats are capable of. 

Scial: Yeah, I would add Max is great about learning and has available a number of tools that are already available for this kind of work. The woven electric fence so that it's not just a straight line fence, you can weave it around the plants that you want to protect and that kind of thing, but it's electrified.

It'll, you know, the goats know it's there. It hasn't been mentioned that Max has a herding dog and that obviously helps with the operation and there's a lot of fun to just adds to the entertainment and going out there and hanging out with the goats and whatnot. Obviously there's a committed investment in trailers and stuff like that.

But, a number of, a lot of this stuff is already out there. Max is trying to take it up to the next level with GPS collars where he can basically set up fencing and leave the goats in an area, at least a small portion of his herd, in an area and just let them do their work 24 7.

There’s a lot out there already. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. And although we're not handing you out studies of the how effective this has been, a lot of land management is, you don't need a study. It's visually you can tell when something is good or bad.

And this has obviously been a great thing for us just to the, like I said, the peace of mind factor is kind of a huge one. But Max hits the nail on the head of just get out there and do it. It's an effective method. It’s well established in many places.

 There's states all over it’s a funny, once I started working with Max and everything, starting to realize all these different states that actually have even more active goat grazing programs than here where Max and a few others are it. Where they're using them for highway transportation right of away maintenance and things like that. That also helps with fuels reduction because you don't have that large tall grass there were to catch the spark from a trailer wheel or whatever the case may be. This is only going to grow in importance and need as, we get a warmer and drier planet and especially here in the southwest as we know, that's supposed to hit us a little harder.

And so taking advantage of every tool in the toolbox, as we say, is it's just gotta be done from, from any land manager. 

Emile: Excellent. So I feel like you've hit on this next question a bit throughout our conversation, but I'm gonna ask it anyway because we may have missed something. And that is what's next?

What's next with this project? What's your next step? And this is for both of you. 

Max: Well I think for us, it is great to work with somebody like Scial and a lot of the land managers that we have right now that we're involved with, is. They’re everybody's willing and wanting to learn more.

And how can we do things differently? How can we do things better? Different doesn't always mean better. And better doesn't always necessarily mean different, but in the case of goats. I think we're all on this journey of realizing what are some more opportunities? I think, Scial and I are talking about doing some projects this winter where we do something called bale grazing, where you lay down a bunch of hay for your goats.

They go in there, they eat it. While they're doing it, they're pooping, they're peeing, they're walking and trampling in, and you take 'em out of there before they eat everything and it leaves back nutrients for the soil, it leaves back, ground cover for the soil. All the things that as a, as any ecologist or land manager would say, we need more nutrients in the ground and we need that ground to be covered.

So those are things that we are utilizing the goats for. And we've been seeing that with project after project that we take on with different customers. Oh, okay, this is a new way of doing things and this is something that we didn't realize we could, was an opportunity. And that's for both me as a goat grazer and for those people that are trying to manage land.

We're working with a group now that does flood control and, with the city of Albuquerque, and they're looking at arroyos where we have runoff, stormwater runoff that's gonna, has to find its way somewhere. Well those places aren't always accessible by machinery and can be dangerous and hard for people, so well, goats can manage that terrain and do well with it.

So that's what's exciting. That's what's next for us, I think, as a grazing company is. Just looking at more opportunity where goats can be utilized and like Scial was saying, utilizing GPS collars where we can, we don't have, we get into some areas where it's even, it's really hard to put up fencing.

And which makes it difficult then to use the goats, but then, if we can use, remote or virtual fencing via GPS to put goats in an area that is not accessible or can't put up fence, but they can still do the work that goats do, whether it be for invasive vegetation management or fire fuels reduction. 

These are some pretty exciting things that we can start to implement and put into place and get great results and work with folks like Scial that, that are willing to try something new because it might just work. 

Scial: Yeah, it's been really great for me as we discussed at the beginning, it was just a pilot project that a state forester was willing to give a try and kind of fell in, into my lap through connections and Max, you know, leading the charge here.

And, it's been really great for me. I've, I'm real fortunate to have come across funding where we can, you know, basically retain Max's services for quite a bit into the future. But for me it's also great to see how, as he said, these other agencies are taking note of this and figuring out ways that it could benefit them.

'Cause we're impacted by some of these same agencies, like that flood control agency he talked about that the end of the flood route ends at the Rio Grande on the southern tip of the Pueblo's reservation. And so knowing that, they were and knowing that they can make use of Max's goats for their needs.

'cause I'm interacting with them all the time is just, a really cool thing to hear. So for the future, for me, as I said, it's, it's a lot of just hitting the repeat button. We really just, tumbleweed and kochia are just gonna keep coming in in their cycles and until we can kind of get into an area and get ahead of 'em and get some grasses growing or whatever the case may be, we're gonna continue to need that.

That work that Max's goats are doing. Hopefully there's no major goat labor strikes in the future, and we can keep 'em going and, and, we'll be happy to keep having 'em here on the Pueblo. It's, there's a lot of area to cover and there's always, more stuff growing that needs to be knocked back so that we can, like I said, at least do our due diligence to reduce fuels and, and, keep fire risk to a minimum.

Emile: Excellent. Thanks so much. So Max, you mentioned virtual fencing and I'm kind of fascinated by the idea of virtual fencing with goats. And I'm wondering there, I know there's that training period that, cattle go through and other animals, and I'm wondering if you know anybody or have heard of anybody who's successfully used virtual fencing with goats?

Max: Yeah. There's a, there's quite a few actually out there, and I do, I have a podcast myself and I interview other goat grazers in the industry. And, one that comes out is Blue Collar Goatscaping Adam Lavina up in Iowa. He runs a large herd of, I, I think close to a hundred goats that he has on virtual fencing and it what it does, and he's a much larger grazer than I am running close to a thousand or so goats all over the state of Iowa. 

The virtual fencing, is it works in some instances and doesn't work in others. It’s one of those things that opens up more opportunity for us, for land managers and for grazers to be, to look at a situation and go, boy, if only I could have my goats out there without, 'cause I can't run fencing or I can't get to it well enough. It all opens up that opportunity to where, for a grazer now you've just taken your grazable acreage or your opportunities and just opened up an entirely new can of worms, if you will, that gives you like this different like, aha moment.

Wow, I wouldn't have been able to do this before, but now we can do this. And we've just done it on a test basis with just 10 goats at this point, and realizing that going into to this next year, into 2026, I plan on getting a herd of, enough collars for a herd of 40 or 50 goats to just really increase the ability to do a lot more things.

And there, there's several other grazers out there that are using it on a much larger scale. Been doing it for quite a while and are having great success with it. 

Emile: That's exciting. Good to hear. So Scial, I am curious, what is the one thing that you hope listeners remember from our conversation?

Scial: Oh, boy. Well related to goats, it's that they're effective,. They show up. They do their job well, they eat. It's also been kind of entertaining watching how much rounder Max's goats have gotten over the years as he is, persistently kept them working. But, but, the method is effective for at least knocking back your, your short term fuels, opening an area up and giving you more options as a land manager.

So it, that’d be the one takeaway. Is give it a try. It is effective. 

Emile: Excellent. Thanks. And same question to you, Max. What's the one thing that you hope people remember from our conversation? 

Max: Goats are great. That’s the bottom line of it, is for a land manager like Scial said, having tools in the toolbox. Goats aren't always the answer and fire is not always the answer.

Chemicals are not always the an answer, chainsaws and large machinery. They all have their place and can all be effective tools and it just depends on the situation. The point for goats is that they are a very effective tool in the toolbox and can be used in a number of different instances and possibilities.

And it gives a land manager also the opportunity, depending on their situation to be able to use, to show and to be utilizing a method that is very natural, that's very green, very in, in tune with nature. And that in a lot of cases, that's what a lot of land managers need because of pushback that they might have from a community or, as a, land manager, that things have to happen. 

Be, nature can't always take its course because of that urban wildland interface where you've got a house right next to a forest and those things have to be treated differently than just complete nature and natural things.

We as people and managers have to step in and do some things. And a lot of times people don't want to hear the large machinery. They definitely don't want chemicals out there. They definitely don't want a controlled burn or things on fire near their home. 

But a herd of goats out there, that's a whole different story. So I think that it's a tool that needs to be utilized more and I hope it does. 

Emile: Excellent. So this is my last question. We like to ask people that we get to talk with about what gives them hope. And so Scial, we'll start with you. What gives you hope? 

Scial: Well one of the things that gives me hope is just my local setting where I work for a relatively small pueblo, that has a good size land base.

And of the different challenges that they have to face is, they have every responsibility that any government, governance would have in terms of taking care of its people. And from the time they were able to afford, if you will, to have an environment department and a, and then with within that the Bosque program that takes care of their bosque, it was a high priority.

It just underscores that, no matter what, there's an understanding that, taking care of the land and giving back to it is a resonating part of this culture. And then when you expand outward, it's very much a part of the New Mexico culture, with all these different agencies that are involved in land management and they're very well supported here.

It's actually pretty good to see. It gives me an underpinning of being able to keep going no matter how challenging things get or how sometimes how bleak the news can be, as we all know. 

I kind of agree that climate change isn't gonna be that initial overwhelming catastrophe that it kind of was made out to be when I first learned of it when I was back in college and stuff like that, but it was so unknown back then. So it was, as we kind of get a better sense of what it is going to do and whatnot, just having people realize that really what's gonna happen is we're just gonna have to face this change head on and continue to do our best with natural resource management is what's gonna get us through.

Emile: It's nice to be in New Mexico. I appreciate that answer. So Max, I have the same question for you. What gives you hope? 

Max: Goats give me hope. Well because my entire career life at this point for many years now, completely revolve around goats. So when you look at that that puts, that's what feeds us, not goats in particular.

I, we don't eat our goats, but, but goats provide, the opportunity of, for us, to make a living. And it's, it's encouraging, very encouraging. Gives me a lot of hope that there are people out there like Scial, like a lot of the managers that we work with that are really doing a lot of very practical management for our natural resources and it gives me a lot of hope that the goats are a very valuable and needed and wanted tool in all of that.

And regardless of what's going on in the world with you're, when you're out with a herd of goats, like Scial says, our goats like to show up to work every day. They like to do their job and they don't argue about doing their job. Their job is to eat. And I tell you what, there's just not a goat out there that doesn't love to eat.

We, as long as we can get 'em there and as long as we can show 'em the way they do their job very easily, which is they just put their head down or up. They’ll either climb up into the trees or go, put their nose down to the ground and they just eat. And that's, it's a nice place to be on a day-to-day basis, and it gives me a lot of hope that there's a lot more people out there that are seeing the value in that.

Emile: Max Wade, Michael Scialdone, thank you so much for talking to us today. 

Max: My pleasure. 

Scial: It was a pleasure. Thank you. Appreciate you reaching out. 

Max: Fantastic. 

Emile: Thanks for listening to Come Rain or Shine podcast of the USGS Southwest CASC, New Mexico State University and the University of Arizona. If you liked this podcast don't forget to rate or review it and subscribe for more great episodes. 

Sarah: A special thanks to our production crew, Reanna Burnett and Lauren White. If you want more information, have any questions for the speakers or would like to offer feedback, please reach out to us via our website.