Intro to Prescribed Grazing
What is Prescribed Grazing?
At Grazing School of the West, we see prescribed grazing as both an ancient practice and a modern land management tool—one that sits at the intersection of ecology, wildfire resilience, and working landscapes.
Prescribed grazing—also called targeted grazing, contract grazing, or prescribed herbivory—is the intentional use of livestock to achieve specific vegetation and land management goals. Rather than grazing for livestock production alone, animals are stewarded as helpers to shape ecosystems: reducing wildfire fuels, managing invasive species, and restoring ecological function.
Grazing Types and Strategies: What’s the Difference?
Grazing systems and strategies often work together. Prescribed grazing is goal-driven, targeted and adaptive as a service-based approach, while rotational, deferred, strip, mob, and multi-species grazing are the practical tools used to carry it out. Adaptive management takes a holistic approach to help guide those choices so that they fit the project’s ecological, production, or stewardship goals.
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The California Context: Why Prescribed Grazing?
California and much of the West are experiencing a wildfire crisis on a scale never seen before. More than 25 million acres of California wildlands are classified as under very high or extreme fire threat and wildfires were the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state in 2020. California’s grasslands (25% of the state) co-evolved with vast herds of grazing animals, some now extinct, which, along with Indigenous practices of controlled burning, kept wildfires in check. Grazing reduces flame length and fire intensity (“fuel load”), and can therefore shift grasses from a highly flammable and effective fire spreader into a natural fire barrier.
This shift has both ecological and safety benefits and is a departure from our current mitigation strategies that rely heavily on fossil fuel-dependent machinery, such as 2-stroke weed whippers, and herbicide-intensive vegetation management (i.e. using glyphosate) that poison our landscape, pollute our air, and fall short of our wildfire prevention needs. Conversely, grazing requires little-to-no chemical or fossil fuel inputs, and when managed correctly it boosts the potential for soil carbon sequestration, water retention and cycling, land and habitat restoration, and increased biodiversity.
In California, the term prescribed grazing is used intentionally to align livestock with other land management tools like prescribed fire, firmly situating grazing within the state’s formal wildfire resilience strategy. This shift is backed by recent legislation:
AB 297 (2023) formally defined prescribed grazing in state law and established it as an eligible activity within wildfire prevention programs
SB 675 (2024) expanded that foundation by integrating grazing into statewide planning, funding, and implementation efforts
Under these policy frameworks, prescribed grazing is now recognized as:
A planned vegetation treatment
A wildfire resilience strategy
A public-benefit land stewardship practice
At the state level, this means:
Grazing is codified in the Public Resources Code
Projects are eligible for CAL FIRE funding, including infrastructure like fencing and water systems
State agencies are tasked with developing regional grazing plans and best practices
Grazing is integrated into the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan
This language matters!
By codifying prescribed grazing in the Public Resources Code, California has taken a critical step toward legitimizing the industry—recognizing both its ecological impact and its role as essential infrastructure for wildfire resilience and land stewardship.
It signals growing state support and opens the door for funding, planning, and broader adoption. At the same time, significant hurdles remain. Prescribed grazing professionals and small ruminant producers continue to navigate challenges around workforce, infrastructure, economics, and access to land.
Even so, this shift marks an important turning point—moving prescribed grazing from the margins toward a more supported, scalable, and viable path forward in California.
Other Applications for Prescribed Grazing
Animal-Crop Integration & Local Food and Fiber Systems
Raising livestock and crops together was once the norm in the U.S. and research has found that reintegrating livestock via prescribed grazing in crop production systems yields substantial benefits in improved soil health, reduced risks associated with product diversification, reductions in fertilizer and animal feed costs, reduced labor and machinery costs, and increased carbon sequestration. When the soil’s organic carbon content increases, the soil’s ability to hold water also increases, which provides landscapes with a critical buffer to the impacts of drought. Increased water holding also lessens the need for increased irrigation and reduces agricultural use of aquifers and surface water. As animals increasingly are integrated into our practices of wildfire mitigation, land restoration and crop integration, we gain the interconnected benefit of creating more regionalized and ecologically responsible food and fiber systems. Through this process we’re feeding the demand for regionally produced food, building avenues for climate-beneficial fiber production, and forging more pathways for the viable livelihoods of graziers and a thriving local ecosystem of businesses, practitioners, and professionals in the field of regenerative agriculture, food systems, land stewardship, and public safety.
Learning & Exposure
Intro webinars & recorded talks
Case studies & storytelling
Intro ecology & systems thinking
Who’s Who in the Field
National orgs shaping the field
Regional programs
Research & education hubs
Links to:
Intro webinars
Recorded talks / explainers
Articles, research summaries
Partner org “About” pages
