{"id":5855,"date":"2025-07-28T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/koto.org\/?post_type=news&p=5855"},"modified":"2025-08-19T10:40:51","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T16:40:51","slug":"durangoats-goats-weed-mitigation-telluride-valleyfloor","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/koto.org\/es\/news\/durangoats-goats-weed-mitigation-telluride-valleyfloor\/","title":{"rendered":"Goats Graze the Valley Floor"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a warm July day. Jonathan Bartley and Adrian Lacasse are on Telluride\u2019s Valley Floor \u2014 with over 80 bleating companions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s Duce 2.0, and then you have Cookie over there, who looks like cookie dough ice cream. He\u2019s one of our lead, favorite goats. Mumu over there munching on the thistle,\u201d Bartley said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bartley and Lacasse are the owners and managers of Durangoats, a Durango-based fire and weed mitigation company. Their method? Goats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe take a regenerative approach to the land management. It\u2019s all about regenerating the land. From the beginning of every site visit we always say, this is not about getting rid of the weeds, or destroying the weeds, or anything like that. Even in the mentality of that, you\u2019re entering into the destructive, extractive methods that have gotten us here,\u201d Bartley said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe goal is more to create an environment that the weeds can\u2019t thrive in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bartley started Durangoats after four seasons of wildland firefighting, looking for a regenerative way to fight fires. He started with six baby goats: Fanta, Cola, Barg, Spirit, Dewey and Pepe \u2014 named after the soda bottles Bartley bottle-fed them from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve been there from the beginning. They\u2019re everything. It\u2019s cool to have this relationship with your stock where you provide for them and they provide for you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than wildfire prevention, the town of Telluride hired Durangoats for weed mitigation. The goats are eating thistle and yellow toadflax on approximately four acres of land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re down on the Valley Floor, and there are a bunch of thistles that are blooming big purple flowers everywhere,\u201d Lacasse said. \u201cWe\u2019re enclosing those blooming thistles within our electric fence and trying to keep as many of these invasive plants in the fence and as many native plants outside the fence as we can. We always have the pen where the goats are in, and they\u2019re just about done with their area right now. So, we have their next pen set up. So, we\u2019re constantly leapfrogging them from one pen to the other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this morning, the goats have been in one pen for about 24 hours and are ready to move to the next. Lacasse and Bartley use a herding dog named Kippy to shuttle the goats to the new pasture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once in the pen, the process is quite simple. The goats eat the plants \u2014 seeds, leaves and all \u2014 preventing them from photosynthesizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe time out our management of the weeds with the biocycle of the plant, so when we eat down these flower heads, it\u2019s in its seeding season so it\u2019s less likely to go into another bloom,\u201d Bartley said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the goats aren\u2019t only removing the weeds \u2014 they\u2019re fertilizing the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey ferment whatever they\u2019re eating in their stomach, and spread this micro-rich and nitrogen-rich manure. It\u2019s incredibly good for the soil,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Durangoats is a business, but for Bartley and Lacasse, it\u2019s more than that. It\u2019s small and meaningful steps toward healing the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you compare these things that are the worst of the worst carcinogens, and then you compare it to a goat eating down this plant, then using that plant \u2014 that you would have sprayed chemicals on \u2014 to fertilize your earth \u2014 which is actually the solution to getting rid of those weeds, it\u2019s healing that earth. So, fertilizing it. Then they can be turning it into goat milk. It\u2019s wild that this isn\u2019t more common,\u201d Bartley said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s about making intentional, and historic, efforts to have a more reciprocal relationship with the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty wild to see how many vast impacts can happen just by trying to replicate nature and using a natural path,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While climate change and creating a healthy planet is a multifaceted, complex conversation, the Durangoats are doing their part \u2014 munching on thistle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Julia Caulfield\/KOTO<\/figcaption><\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Telluride\u2019s Valley Floor, Durangoats is part of a bleating revolution\u2014using goats to control invasive weeds naturally and restore ecosystems without chemicals.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":5857,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true},"news-category":[514],"news-tag":[977,975,980,976,974,978,477,828,979],"class_list":["post-5855","news","type-news","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-category-featured-stories","news-tag-climate-solutions","news-tag-durangoats","news-tag-goat-grazing","news-tag-invasive-species-control","news-tag-regenerative-agriculture","news-tag-sustainable-farming","news-tag-telluride","news-tag-valley-floor","news-tag-weed-mitigation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGoats Graze the Valley Floor - KOTO FM<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Durango-based Durangoats uses goats for natural weed control in Telluride, offering a regenerative, eco-friendly solution to land and fire management.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/koto.org\/es\/noticias-2\/durangoats-goats-weed-mitigation-telluride-valleyfloor\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"es_MX\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Goats Graze the Valley Floor - 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