Christian Cordova Aliaga, a shepherd from Peru, spends his days trailing and tending a flock of about 150 goats in California’s East Bay. Employed by Goats R Us, a local ranch, he moves the animals every few days to overgrown meadows, grasslands, and forests near homes, schools, and other buildings that are vulnerable to wildfire.
Targeted grazing is a tradition that goes back centuries, and Aliaga — whose earnings support his wife and three children in Peru — learned at a young age how to care for animals from his parents and grandparents. “This was passed down through generations,” he says. Unlike thinning with machinery, Aliaga’s goats don’t spill oil, spark fires, or disturb the soil. “This is more natural,” he says, “and at the same time they are fertilizing the land.” The goats are particularly keen to eat the leaves of poison oak and French broom, which are difficult to remove by hand.
Filmmaker Matthew Boyd followed Aliaga, who works alone except for two border collies, during the dry summer grazing seasons between 2020 and 2022. What did Boyd hope his audience would take away from his lyrical, contemplative film? “I wanted to give viewers a glimpse into a simpler, old-world way of living — in nature, alone with the animals.” And with fire season starting ever earlier in the West, he added, it was important for him to demonstrate “environmentally sound methods of mitigating wildfires in a land so consistently devastated by them.”
About the Filmmaker: Matthew Boyd is an award-winning cinematographer and director based in Oakland, California, working in feature film, short film, documentary, and television. His work has been featured on Netflix, HBO Documentary Films, Showtime, theatrically, and in film festivals worldwide. He is currently in production on Barren Grounds, his feature-length directorial debut.
About the Contest: Now in its 11th season, the Yale Environment 360 Film Contest honors the year’s best environmental documentaries, with the aim of recognizing work that has not previously been widely seen. This year we received 714 submissions from 91 countries across six continents, with the winners selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Thomas Lennon, and e360’s executive editor Roger Cohn.
