COMMENTARY NOVEMBER 16, 2023 Volume 31, Number 13
PUBLISHER: Fran Zankowski
ED ITOR IAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Shay Castle ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR: Jezy J. Gray REPORTERS: Kaylee Harter, Will Matuska FOOD EDITOR: John Lehndorff INTERN: Lily Fletcher CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Will Brendza, Rob Brezsny, Michael J. Casey, Ari LeVaux, Dan Savage, Toni Tresca, Ernie Atencio
SAL ES AN D M AR KETIN G MARKET DEVELOPMENT MANAGER: Kellie Robinson SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE: Matthew Fischer ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES: Chris Allred, Ryan Peterson SPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGER: Carter Ferryman MRS. BOULDER WEEKLY: Mari Nevar
PR OD U C TION CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Erik Wogen SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER: Mark Goodman
C IR C U L ATION CIRCULATION MANAGER: Cal Winn CIRCULATION TEAM: Sue Butcher, Ken Rott, Chris Bauer
BU SIN ESS OFFIC E
WRITERS ON THE RANGE
BOOKKEEPER: Emily Weinberg FOUNDER / CEO: Stewart Sallo
RADICALS AT REST Celebrating the lives and activism of Sid Goodloe and Dave Foreman BY ERNIE ATENCIO
T
he West lost two larger-thanlife conservationists this year, and while I considered both friends, they couldn’t have been more different. Yet both were radical in their own ways. One was ranching reformer Sid Goodloe, the other the activist and “monkey-wrencher” Dave Foreman. Each changed the way we think about this region. Goodloe, who was almost 93 when he died, bought a badly abused ranch in El Capitan, New 4
NOVEMBER 16, 2023
Mexico, in 1956. Restoring it to health became a project that lasted nearly seven decades. Taking his young family to Africa to learn traditional livestock techniques set him on a new land management path. There he met Allan Savory, who showed him the wisdom of short-duration, rotational grazing. Once home, Goodloe got Savory invited to range management schools to teach the rest of the West how to restore abused land. He also realized something surprising: His
ranch had once been a savannah grassland. Goodloe practiced “restorative ranching” long before there was such a term. He won a Leopold Conservation Award for using the chainsaw and prescribed fire as some of his tools to eliminate invasive pinyons and junipers. Where eroded arroyos once ravaged his ranch with floods every time it rained, he filled in gullies to bring back flowing streams. His work restored habitat for endangered
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