Rx Grazing School

Working landscape ecosystems provide benefits to the landowner and to all life forms living or passing through that land. Neighbors benefit with open viewscapes, to clean water and air, and carbon sequestration from well-maintained working landscapes – rangelands, grassland, and open space. There also a potential health benefits received from working landscape from properly managed vegetation removal to reduce the fire fuel loads. However, there are many challenges for landowners to...

Cattle grazing

Cattle grazing

The Rancher: A Threatened Species

This spring, I am teaching the Santa Rosa Junior College Rangeland Management class.  This is my opportunity to educate aspiring students on the importance of rangelands and how to manage them. Their educational experiences include classroom lectures and field trips, learning about rangeland principles and then practice application. Our first field trip was to Sonoma County's Taylor Mountain Regional Park, (attached photo). UC Cooperative Extension created, “Ecosystem Services...

Spring 2019 SRJC Range Management Class at Sonoma County Regional Park: Taylor Mountain

Spring 2019 SRJC Range Management Class at Taylor Mountain

Why Cows sign Taylor Mtn

Will livestock grazing on rangelands reduce the potential for and severity of wildfires?

UCCE Sonoma County along with other UC colleagues, recently received a grant to identify the impact of grazing on the frequency and severity of wildfire in California. The project will ask three specific questions: Does grazing reduce the likelihood of fires at the landscape scale? Does fire severity differ between grazed and ungrazed lands? What are the synergies and tradeoffs of grazing management as a tool to directly reduce wildfire risk? Our results will be used to: Suggest to...

Grazing could have reduced/eliminated the shrubs growing near this subdivision

Grazing could have reduced/eliminated the shrubs growing near this subdivision

Prescriptive Grazing as a Vegetation Management Tool

Prescriptive Grazing as a Vegetation Management Tool  Stephanie Larson & John Gorman  Working landscape ecosystems provide benefits to the landowner and to all life forms living or passing through that land.  Neighbors benefit with open viewscapes, to clean water and air, and carbon sequestration from well-maintained working landscapes – rangelands, grassland, and open space. There also a potential health benefits received from working landscape from properly managed...

Grazing, Fire Risk Management, Affirmative Agricultural Easements & Alternative Payment Structures

Eight months after devastating fires swept through Sonoma County, our community has rallied to an ongoing recovery. Still, the tragedy of those wildfires remains fresh in the minds of our friends and neighbors. The lives and property that were lost last year can never be replaced.  As the dry season begins a new and unfortunate truth comes to mind: California is a drought-prone state, and there will always be some risk of wildfire. In Sonoma and Marin Counties, active rangeland management...

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