About The Issue

Most people here agree it's a good thing to have a viable cattle industry in Santa Barbara County. It's good for both the economy and the culture to be diversified, it’s good for resilience to grow our own food and grazed rangeland can be a good fire risk reduction strategy-- a buffer that surrounds our cities and towns and other critical infrastructure. If managed effectively, grazing also helps with carbon sequestration.

Ranching in Santa Barbara County is threatened by a host of factors, among them: increased land costs and/or lease rates; higher costs of production; lower prices at the market; and an increased regulatory burden, which in turn increases the costs of production. All of these self-reinforcing constraints combine to threaten the vibrancy and viability of ranching in the county. And on top of all these other constraints, rangeland conversion and the loss of available grazing lands means that cattle producers have less available land to support their operations.

This guide and case study uses data layers from the Santa Barbara County Conservation Blueprint to deep dive into the issue of Rangeland Fallowing in Santa Barbara County. see especially the Map that has most of the layers pre-loaded.

Also, check out the Rangeland Fallowing Story Map of the Blueprint Atlas effort!

And, this just in! (May 26, 2022) The journal article about this called "Land cover conversion and land use change combine to reduce grazing" has been accepted and will be published very soon in the Journal of Land Use Science.

This project was supported by the Santa Barbara County Conservation Blueprint, the Santa Barbara Foundation, The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, the University of California Cooperative Extension, and the Conservation Biology Institute.