- Author: Karen Giovannini
Matchmaking grazing animals with grass and rangelands
Professional grazing of overgrown rangelands, pastures and parcels is proven to reduce the spread of dangerous and costly wildfires.
Do you have land but no livestock and feel concerned about fire fuels on your property? Or are you a livestock owner that can provide a grazing service and/or need land and forage for your animals? Match.Graze can help.
Match.Graze is a free online platform connecting landowners statewide who want grazing animals to livestock owners with animals that can provide vegetation management services, created by UC Cooperative Extension.
From small semi-rural communities to large open spaces, grazing can provide an affordable solution to the inevitable accumulation of fire fuels. Grazing can be more cost-effective for reducing fuels on landscapes that are too steep, rocky or remote for mowing or chemical treatment, or in the wildland-urban interface where burning is not an option.
“I've noticed on several fires, including extreme fires, the fence lines where the fire just stopped. And the one variable, the one difference, was grazing,” said Marshall Turbeville, CAL FIRE battalion chief.
Cattle, sheep, goats and other grazing animals all have different roles to play in grazing for fire fuel reduction. If you want to use livestock to help reduce fire risk in your area, visit MatchGraze.com.
“Every property is different and requires thoughtful consideration of how it should best be grazed,” said Stephanie Larson, director of UCCE in Sonoma County, UCCE livestock and range management advisor and co-creator of the livestock-land matchmaking service. “UC Cooperative Extension is here to serve, put Match.Graze to work and let's prevent catastrophic fire while helping landowners and agriculture.”
To find a local grazing partner, visit MatchGraze.com,
set up a free account, create a pin on the map and make a match.
- Author: Stephanie Larson
- Author: Michelle Nozzari
- Editor: J. M.
Updated Sept 17, 2020 to add link. Visit: MatchGraze.com
As previously mentioned in the September 2018 issue of the Farm Bureau newsletter, the frequency, intensity, and size of wildfires in northern California have increased. This trend is alarming given that California's fire season is expected to become longer and start earlier. The fire season started in early June this year as Sonoma County experienced smoke from Sand Fire in Yolo County. To mitigate future fire, the County of Sonoma has adopted a new hazardous vegetation abatement ordinance which mandates that parcels of 5 acres or less must maintain defensible space around all buildings/structures and remove all vegetation that poses a fire risk. As policymakers in our communities and across the state continue to explore initiatives to prevent wildfire, the agricultural community can demonstrate real impacts in reducing fire fuel through managing existing vegetation on our working landscapes - forest and rangelands. We need to educate the public on the importance of managing these valuable landscapes using a multitude of tools, especially grazing. The extent to which the public understands fire risks and accepts the adoption of all potential tools for forest and rangeland health will increase the likelihood of potential collaborative management strategies imperative to community resiliency.
Grazing is a cost-effective vegetation management alternative that works best in cases where other options are impractical and financially ineffective. Specifically, targeted grazing can be more cost-effective on landscapes that are too steep, rocky, or remote for conventional vegetation management (like mowing or chemical treatment), or in the urban-wildland interface where burning is not an option. Targeted grazing is the application of a specific kind of livestock at a determined season, duration, and intensity to accomplish defined vegetation or landscape goals. This concept has been around for decades and has taken many names, including prescribed grazing and managed herbivory. The major difference between good grazing management and targeted grazing is that targeted grazing refocuses outputs of grazing from livestock production to vegetation and landscape enhancement. The concept of a target requires that one has a clear image on which to focus and then aims something (i.e., an arrow) at the target to accomplish the desired outcome. In the case of targeted grazing, the land manager must have a clear vision of the desired plant community and landscape, and the livestock manager must have the skill to aim livestock at the target to accomplish land management goals.
As mentioned in the June 2019 Farm Bureau newsletter (Quackenbush), sheep grazing is being applied on lands throughout the county to help reduce fire danger. Targeted grazing is a very different business model than simply grazing for livestock production. Effective targeted grazing focuses on impacting target vegetation at exactly the right time for specific landscape or vegetation goals. Traditional livestock production, on the other hand, focuses on putting weight on animals or increasing reproductive success. Traditional livestock operations generate income from the sale of animals and animal products; these operations focus on body condition and the nutritional status of the animals at specific production stages. Targeted grazers generate income from vegetation management services; these operations may accept a drop in body condition or reproductive success to achieve desired impacts to low-quality forage as long as this service is paid for. Both models can reduce fire fuels; no one model is better than the other.
Last month, UC Cooperative Extension and SRJC Agriculture and Natural Resources Department offered a grazing school at Shone Farm. Landowners and targeted grazers learned how to implement targeted grazing on local working landscapes. Participants gained knowledge on how to design a grazing program on their own managed lands or if they decided not to own animals, how to use this knowledge when hiring a targeted grazer. A neighborhood grazing partnership was created at the school along with new opportunities for targeted grazers.
Additionally, UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) Sonoma/Marin, is creating a “Match.Graze” system which connects landowners, who have no animals, to targeted grazers, those that can bring their animals on property to perform vegetation management service. If your parcel (s) is/are greater than 50 acres, this system will be a great resource. While it is more cost-effective for target grazers to grazer larger parcels, those with smaller parcels in neighborhoods or communities can join together to have multiple parcels of varying sizes in the same geographic area receive vegetation management by the same grazer. If you want more information about the use of grazing, how to set resource goals for your rangelands, or help to find a grazer for your parcel, call the UCCE office at 707-565-2621 or complete this survey to help UCCE better meet your desire to manage vegetation to prevent future fires in Sonoma and Marin Counties. The survey can be found at www.ucanr.edu/rangeland.
- Student Author: Michael O’Neil
- Livestock & Range Management Advisor and SRJC Adjunct Faculty: Stephanie Larson
- Editor: Karen Giovannini
They are also required to give their impressions of what they are learning in the form of a blog. This blog was written by student Michael O'Neil. Stephanie Larson
The Rancher: A Threatened Species
The rangelands of the United States evolved with ground disturbance since the emergence of grazing animals. With the arrival of the first Spanish settlers the rancher has played a role in this process too. American livestock grazing took off in the absence of the American Bison, which had been driven nearly to extinction by hunting, and the rancher's livestock began to fill their role in the Great Plains ecosystem. However, much like the Bison, ranchers grazing their livestock on public lands have not had an easy go of it.
Homestead laws written by lawmakers in the East favored the farmer over the rancher, making it impossible to obtain a plot of land large enough to sustain a grazing operation. With no one having rights to any certain pasture, overgrazing became common as well as conflict with incoming homesteaders. These early range managers recognized the ecological problems that overstocking was creating and pleaded with congress to write legislation to organize the range to no avail. Without adequate plots of land and control on the numbers of cattle grazing in areas the failure rate was high, nearly 100% in some areas.
As the homestead era came to an end in the late 1800's new challenges were presented to the ranchers of the American west. Around this time the government began making withdrawals of public land to create timberland reserves, parks, wildlife reserves, Indian and military reservations. In 1934 the Taylor Act was passed to create a system for leasing rangelands to ranchers, however it left ranchers completely dependent on the federal government for the use of rangelands.
Recently there has been some hope for changing the minds of grazing opposed conservationists. This comes in the form of the Allan Savory Holistic Management method of grazing which has gained a lot of attention in the last 6 years. Savory's method claims that using intense rotation and high-density livestock grazing it is possible to green deserts and reverse climate change. Although the claims made by Savory are not backed by science, his methods have shown positive results. Most importantly, his claims are sure to catch the interest of anyone concerned about environmental conservation. This could lead to an increased awareness of the benefits that gazing can provide to an ecosystem. Although Savory may not be able to accomplish all that he claims with his system, his popularity may help to open people's minds to grazing as a tool for ecosystem management and hopefully foster a better relationship with environmentalists and ranchers.
Learn more about Allan Savory's Holistic Management grazing system.
/h2>- Author: Stephanie Larson
This semester, I am teaching Range Management at Santa Rosa Junior College. I have asked my students to give their impressions of what they are learning in the form of a blog. This blog was written by student Brian Noyes.
Despite the complications and many exceptions given by the broad designation, in essence, learning to manage rangeland is learning to manage grazing. Although I knew the general natural history of the land, it didn't occur to me just how instrumental were the grazing and browsing herds of animals throughout the past in maintaining the landscape. This opens up a very novel way of thinking about land management through animal husbandry. At least it is novel to me, given my background in conservation and habitat restoration, with particular focus on riparian habitats. Grazing livestock is anathema to riparian habitat, plain and simple; how ironic that proper grazing techniques practiced upland of the stream channel are probably one of the most effective tools in preserving water quality through reducing erosion and improving groundwater retention. I look forward to challenging more of my own conceptions in this field going forward.
- Author: Karen Giovannini
Stephanie is the Livestock & Range Management Advisor for Sonoma and Marin Counties, where she conducts education and research to integrate dairy and livestock production with rangeland management and helps local producers to improve production and marketing. She is also the Director of the UCCE Sonoma County office. Read her bio here.
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