California Land Management
After a year or so of searching for land with potential conservation value that we also could live on part time, we purchased 650 acres of oak savannah in San Luis Obispo County, California in 2001. The land, which is in (or near) a wildlife corridor, also sits between the two sections of the Los Padres national forest. Originally part of a Spanish land grant, our parcel has been used for cattle grazing, and although it's likely been overgrazed at times in the past, it is in relatively good shape: in particular is has many trees over a hundred years old.
When we're too old to be here, we hope to give the land away as permanent conservation land, a county park or whatever makes sense.
Our intention for this land is preservation of oaks, enhancement of native grasses and habitat for wildlife. In general, our management inclination is to "leave it alone", but given that we are an island surrounded by invasive species, this is not possible in the long term. We already have to use a combination of hand weeding (for small patches), spraying roundup (for medium, dense patches), and goats (for large areas) to eliminate Star Thistle that pops up every so often. We also have had large quantities of other thistles that we've managed to reduce dramatically by use of goats. The goats are less effective on star thistle, but only because it must be grazed multiple times due to its large taproot. In 2010, we plan on grazing the heaviest star thistle area three times about a month apart. Previously, we grazed twice, a month apart. We've used roundup in limited quantities, always sprayed directly on the star thistle, one plant at a time (very time consuming, but when the soil hardens and you can't pull the root out, its the most effective method. We use the concentrate, diluted by 50%. The weak stuff has no real effect). The best info we've found so far is on the UC-davis website.
Like all California grasslands, our land is covered with Eurasian annual grasses with only a scattering of native grasses occurring--mostly in the drier, sandy areas. The goats we graze HATE native grasses, so some of the areas where we've intensively grazed now have a very healthy crop of natives (largely Stipa). Although they are still relatively rare, we've probably quadrupled our quantity of native grasses.
Our distribution in age of oak trees is decent and improving since we stopped grazing. This issue here is oaks regenerate underneath their own drip line, and that is also where the cattle like to hide from the sun all summer-killing the seedlings by trampling. On other grazed lands, the only seedlings that tend to survive are the ones that pop up in rocks or on slopes that are too steep or otherwise not appealing to the cattle. Most of our tree cover is coast live oak (many over 100 years old), with a decent quantity of California bay laurel mixed in. We also have a small quantity of madrone, valley oak, big leaf maple, sycamore and tanoak.
We heat with wood, but have never had to cut a tree down. The coast live oaks drop branches 12" to 24" across with high regularity. So far there have been far more branches down than we could ever use, leaving plenty for habitat.
Our region contains large swatches of chaparral, but our particular parcels have almost none of it. We're apparently too wet for blue oak, and about 40 miles too far south for coast redwoods. Our most common shrubs are coyote brush, coffee berry, and toyon, and alas poison oak (it a native) and a small quantity of manzanita.
We currently do not graze cattle (ie cows) at all, although we have contemplated some kind of high intensity short term grazing, which would give the native grasses a competitive advantage over the annuals. Neighbors on both sides do graze cattle, and we have constant incursions from one of them (and only one in nine years from the other, which is as best as you can expect), and the incursions unfortunately have been sometimes for a month or more, and although they've generally been short, we don't know what effect this grazing has.1
As far as we know, there were not historically large herbivores in this part of California, so cows are not filling an ecological niche. The annual grasses did co-evolve with large herbivores, and so grazing does seem to benefit them. To anyone other than a cow farmer, these annual grasses are of little value: they don't hold the soil together as well as the perennial natives, they especially don't hold the soil after a fire, they have more biomass, so they would seem to spread fire more rapidly, and most of them have barbs that stick in your socks and irritate you skin.
We have quail, red-tail hawks, turkey vultures, scrub jays, Stellar's jays, towhees (spotted and California, northern flickers, screech owls, horned owls, sharp-shined hawks, crows, hummingbirds (Anna's and rufous), doves, ring-tailed pigeons, goldfinches, an occasional golden eagle, and probably a bunch more since we're not birders.
Monarch butterflies come thru on their annual migration by the tens of thousands.
Our most charismatic visitors are various bobcats and black tail deer. We also have coyotes, skunks, fox, and of course a variety of rodents to feed the carnivores. Black bears and cougar wander thru on rare occasion, although we've seen neither.
Although there are many fire-adapted plants growing here, there appears to be little to no naturally caused fire as thunderstorms are rare, and occur only in the winter. While the Sierra foothills and higher coast range areas have summer thunderstorms, they virtually don't occur here. Because fire is an anathema to many Californians, the idea of prescribed burns isn't something you can even talk about. There may, in fact be no benefit anyhow. Downed wood rots quite rapidly, and live oak trees tend to grow close to the ground, with many branches literally sitting on the ground. We continue to do research on the topic.
Our weather is generally much cooler and windier than in Atascadero, as well as quite a bit wetter (twice the rainfall seems typical--we get 25-30'' typically) and cloudier as well. In the winter, its much colder than directly on the coast , while in the summer its hotter. We generally get very little summer fog.
The elevation ranges from around 1300 feet to around 1900 feet, with very little flat land anywhere. Most of the surface rock is friable sandstone, with soils ranging from very sandy to a high percentage of clay. There are small quantities of chert (or some similar type rock).
We have considered growing a small amount of some crop since we are technically in the county agriculture preserve, but have resisted so far, because habitat seems to be (by far) the best use of the land. If we did grow something, it would be very limited in scope, and needing little to no water (like olives). We are also looking into donating a conservation easement, but because we're in the Ag-preserve there is no real incentive to do so.
Since there is a tradition of naming places (usually something starting with "ranch" or "rancho"), we have adopted the name "Tiera Silvestre del Zopilote Gordo", which is a close as we can come to a translation of "Fat Buzzard Wilderness". The name came about for a number of reasons: We wanted a Spanish name cause we like the way it sounds (not because the Spanish did anything good to the land!), because the buzzard is under appreciated part of the ecosystem (and also because Condors are in fact very large buzzards), because we didn't want to call it a ranch and give the connotation of cattle (which Edward Abbey described better than anyone as "Ugly, clumsy, stupid, bawling, stinking, fly-covered, shit-smeared, disease spreading brutes"). Our opinion isn't quite that rash, but cow-farmers (they call themselves ranchers) think they're so special (say as compared to a Spinach farmer, or even a dairy farmer) that we lean the other way just to compensate for their arrogance.2
We could have used a Chumash name (but we don't know any words), or stuck with English, but that wouldn't have been any fun at all.
Notes
1: unless we can prove monetary damage there is no penalty to the cow-farmer for the incursions--its up to them to be conscientious enough to keep their fences in repair after a storm, rather than wait for us to call them and bitch about their cows. If we planted thousands of dollars of vineyards, he'd keep the fences fixed: but shitting all over the place, compacting the soil, and smashing little oak trees isn't considered a monetary loss.
One guy always fixes his fence, and the other fixes it only sometimes. Admittedly, its a tough business, often with very low profit, but that shouldn't be our problem. We bought a spool of barb wire, and a stretcher, and we often fix it ourselves-its a real shit job.
Luckily, the completely irresponsible guy is long gone, and the new guy is quite nice.
2: My disdain for cow farmers is partly due to their general total lack of respect for our perspective. It doesn't however, stop me from listening to Willie Nelson, even though he helps their marketing effort.