Prescribed Grazing: Capacity Building - Growing Regional Prescribed Grazing Capacity

A parallel effort to the countywide planning effort is to engage existing prescribed grazing contractors and potential new entrants to assess existing capacity and understand and overcome barriers to growing their enterprises to expand regional capacity for the service. With increased fire risk and funding for risk mitigation, prescribed grazing promises to be a growing business opportunity and should present opportunities to support entrepreneurial initiative in farm worker, immigrant and other under resourced communities. Supporting entrepreneurship in these communities is a proven strategy to address inequities and generate economic development opportunities where they're most needed.

Status: Partially Funded (In 2019, the OVFSC began developing a comprehensive, community-focused and driven wildfire risk mitigation strategy.

In April 2022, OVFSC hosted a very successful Prescribed Grazing Planning Summit which drew a diverse crowd statewide, including conservation managers of resource conservation districts, fire personnel, fire safe councils, Chumash representatives, grazers, UC-ANR and UC Cooperative Extension, certified rangeland managers, land trusts and conservancies, ranchers and members of California Climate and Agricultural Network (CalCAN) and other SMEs. The Summit was planned, organized and conducted by the OVFSC, Santa Barbara Community Environmental Council, and the facilitator, Legacy Works.

From 2022-2023 Ojai Fire Safe County, Shepherdess Land and Livestock, Community Environmental Council and others applied for two CALFIRE Fire Prevention grants to build capacity for Fire Prevention programming, Capacity for prescribed grazing contracts, Implementation of a Wildfire Intensity Reduction Zone (aka The Corridor) and Develop a Community-Supported Grazing Program)

Cost: High

Partners: Ojai Fire Safe council, Shepherdess Land and Livestock, Community Environmental Council

Funding Sources: Cal Fire, California Coastal Conservancy

Permitting: None

Additional Notes: There is currently a need to increase the number of entities who can implement and manage prescribed grazing activities.