Sid Goodloe

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Sid Goodloe is a ranch manager and former USDA official, and was the first U.S. proponent of Allan Savory and The Savory Method.

In 1956, he purchased the 1,400 hectare Carrizo Valley Ranch in south-central New Mexico. At the time it was "overrun with juniper, pinyon, and ponderosa pine." He falsely diagnosed as a problem, based on an erroneous view that denies the widespread and historic presence of these trees across the bioregion.[1]

Deforestation

Sid Goodloe spent much of the first decade of his management of the ranch destroying over 1,000 acres of Native forest:

With help from the U.S. Soil Conservation Service, he brought in a crew to drag a huge anchor chain, hung between two bulldozers, across half of his 3,500 acres, knocking down the piñon and juniper trees.

The same thing was being done all across the Southwest. Ranchers and federal land managers were trying with varying degrees of urgency to turn back the "brush" that was invading the region's federal and private grasslands. All efforts depended on the same thing: generous help from the U.S. Treasury...

Then, in the early 1960s, about five years after he had chained, Goodloe got a shock. He realized that the big trees the anchor chain had knocked down and left for dead were alive. "The chain had just pulled the trees over, but some roots were still in the ground."

Using all the time he could spare from working jobs off the ranch on the task, he bulldozed downed trees into windrows and burned them. When he wasn't bulldozing and burning the big trees, he was on his tractor, "popping the small trees out of the ground" before they grew too large to handle.


After meeting Allan Savory in the 1960s, he wrote an article in 1969 promoting Savory's method[2] and began applying it on his ranch.

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Deforestation

2001 Bio

For over two decades, Sid has been an international livestock consultant in Australia, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Madagascar, and ranch manager for Diamond A Cattle Company in Roswell. He served on the Users Advisory Board to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture for six years. Sid established the First Short Duration Grazing or “Savory” method in the U.S., which is still in operation with few changes. He received the 1995 National Cattlemen’s Association’s Environmental Stewardship Award, Region 6, and the 1999 New Mexico Watershed Coalition’s Watershed Steward Award.[3]

  1. "Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle Of Water And Prosperity," Sandra Postel 2017, https://vdoc.pub/documents/replenish-the-virtuous-cycle-of-water-and-prosperity-3n4kvr8i1bdg
  2. https://1library.net/document/ynlrvojq-short-duration-grazing-in-rhodesia.html
  3. "New Mexico Watershed Management: Restoration, Utilization, and Protection," Proceedings of the 46th Annual New Mexico Water Conference, November 5-7, 2001; https://nmwrri.nmsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/ConfOneFile/2001%20Conference%20Proceedings%20(as%20one%20file).pdf