Business has been good these days for Chasin Goat Grazing. [Photo courtesy Emma Cianfichi]
The Napa Pasture Protein fuel-reduction crew gets an assist from a llama as they climb into hard-to-reach terrain. [Courtesy Cori Carlson]
grazing ruminants and ungulates,” Keiser says. “They coevolved together. So we need to make sure that we’re understanding those two pieces actually go together very beautifully.” Keiser says the key is how we humans manage them. “The indigenous people utilized the large herds of elk and deer,” she says. “They would just push them through or encourage them to different places to do grazing.” Those who have embraced grazing for fire fuel reduction as a way to bring back a healthy landscape have inadvertently become stewards of the land through that good management. Carbon sequestration occurs as photosynthesis when plants that have been grazed begin to grow again. It could be done with mechanized equipment taking down the tall grasses and then allowing the regrowth to happen, but Keiser points out that in that scenario an important component would be missing. “The difference with animals is they’re digesting the grass, their hoof impact is aerating the soil and their manure and urine are adding organic matter back to the soil,” she says. “They’re not just removing vegetation for regrowth, they’re replacing and building the system.” Keiser notes that a stockyard system is something completely different and detrimental to the land. When a lot of land is being used for growing grains and animals are then kept in a stockyard and fed those grains—all of that land is being depleted. “That’s a broken system,” Keiser says. “What would be far better is if we actually had those animals on the land grazing
around and building prairies and grasslands with deep root systems—not tilling the land for grain production. We’ve lost so much of our soil and a lot of our healthy systems through tilling soils. “Where there are animals being put across the land and managed well, we see much more flourishing ecosystems, more land for birds and wildlife,” she says. Keiser says that one of the grazing coops had a goal of transforming its landscape and timed its grazing impact for that. “They have now eliminated the invasive Scotch broom that had heavily reduced annual native grasses, and we’ve seen three different types of native California clumping grasses come back onto that landscape after the third year of grazing,” she says. “Because we’ve created the space and the network for those seeds to come back and grow, our native seed bank can live up to 200 years in the soil,” she says. “They’re perennials, so there’s carbon sequestration happening year-round. They’re green year- round, and they have much more water retention that helps to create spongy soil. So our water goes down into the soil and not down the hill and into the river, taking a bunch of soil with it.” Adds Keiser: “Resiliency isn’t just getting rid of vegetation. It’s thinking about an ecosystem that is fire resilient, absorbs water, is healthier and balanced so we can have healthy fires instead of devastating wildfires.”
July 2024
NorthBaybiz 41
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