California Land Management
After a year or so of searching for land with potential conservation value that we also could live on, 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) and spray (for large patches) 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. We've also used goats on star thistle, but with somewhat less success. Goats will reduce the amount of star thistle if you time the grazing just right, but will not completely eliminate it. We've used gyphosate ("round-up") in limited quantities and directly on the thistle, but its kills the competition also. The most effective thing we've found so far is Clopyralid, which is a broad leaf killer that kills mostly thistle (and alas also clover and lupine). This seems to be the most effective solution, other than picking by hand, which is very effective if you're extremely persistent. For hand picking to work, you have to pick at least one a week from January thru July. The reality is that the plant is so persistent, that it will likely to impossible to eradicate, and the only real effective control would be to import the bug that eats it. There is a ton of info on these options 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.
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. There are also many bay laurels, a scattering of Madrone, valley oaks, tan oaks, a handful of Sycamore and big leaf maples. We're apparently too wet for blue oak, and about 40 miles too far south for coast redwoods.
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 thirteen 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.
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.
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 more reasonable.
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.