Regional Resilience: Advancing Land Stewardship Through Prescribed Grazing
Presented by GSW and White Buffalo Land Trust
June 5-8, 2025 at White Buffalo Land Trust in Lompoc, CA
Want to enhance your land stewardship skills and contribute to a more resilient ecosystem? Join this regionally-focused field lab designed for land managers and owners, agriculturalists, conservationists, fire professionals, and graziers seeking practical tools and strategies to integrate livestock grazing into agricultural and fire-adapted landscapes. Participants will delve into grazing techniques tailored to diverse regional ecological contexts, including chaparral, grasslands, orchards and vineyards, while addressing key goals such as fire readiness, climate change mitigation, watershed management, soil health, and biodiversity enhancement.
Through a combination of field demonstrations, classroom sessions, and collaborative learning, this four-day intensive equips participants with the tools to make grazing a cornerstone of effective landscape stewardship, emphasizing a resilient ecosystem, reduced wildfire risk, and economic opportunities.
* This course completes the Context and Foundations modules of Holistic Management that can count towards accreditation.
What You Will Learn
Through a combination of hands-on demonstrations and engaging classroom sessions, you'll gain practical tools and strategies for success. This course covers the foundations of Holistic Management, grazing charts and stockmanship for non-traditional grazing contexts, ecological monitoring and invasive species management, fire ecology and using grazing as part of a toolkit of varied vegetation-management approaches, managing livestock in crop systems and other contexts, funding opportunities, financial planning tools, creating grazing contracts with public and private entities and more!
Learn to:
Mitigate wildfire risk and promote ecosystem health
Integrate grazing techniques tailored to chaparral, grasslands, and vineyards
Enhance soil health and biodiversity
Increase the economic viability of your operations
Who Is This For?
People with some experience working with livestock who want to gain a deeper understanding of Prescribed Grazing, and who want to bolster their existing skill sets, particularly in relation to fire ecology and grazing in non-traditional contexts
Owners/managers/employees of existing farm/ranch/vineyard operations who want to add PG services to their revenue streams but don’t know where to start
Grazing practitioners working with public agencies, land managers and private landowners
Public agency staff (RCDs, Land Trusts/Conservancies like TNC, Fire Safe Councils, Parks & Rec folks)
Folks in academia, research, & conservation orgs (fire ecology, range management, regenerative agriculture, etc)
Our Instructors
Benefit from the knowledge of lifelong ranchers and seasoned professionals ready to answer all of your questions. Learn from practitioners who bring a sense of playfulness, hope and joy to their work, along with decades of experience dedicated to cultivating and stewarding the next generation of land stewards.
Our trainers are passionate and skilled practitioners with over a decade of experience under their belts. They are PG business owners, ranchers and Ecological Outcome Verifiers from the Savory Institute, and more.
Come learn the ins and outs of working with ruminants with our wonderful team of trainers! Whether you aim to seek employment in Prescribed Grazing or hope to add PG services to an existing livestock operation, our trainers are ready to guide you in your next direction!
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Jesse Smith is the Director of Land Stewardship at White Buffalo Land Trust and is guiding the development of the Jalama Canyon Ranch as well as working with local and global leaders to broaden and deepen the positive impact of regenerative agriculture on our soil, our health, and our communities. His passion and expertise in agricultural system design and community engagement are a cornerstone of our strategy to achieve a systemic shift towards a regenerative food economy and ecology.
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Cole Bush is the founder and owner of Shepherdess Land and Livestock, a prescribed grazing business based in Ojai, California. In 2020, after spending years developing her business, Cole took the plunge and started her dream grazing business: one that provides both vegetation management services AND vocational training to support the next-generation of shepherds as land stewards. Cole is a practitioner, educator, and consultant in the fields of climate-beneficial agriculture, land stewardship, and prescribed grazing. With over a decade of experience in the field, Cole has developed and managed the treatment of thousands of acres on private and public lands using prescribed grazing with commercial-scale herds of sheep and goats as an ecosystem service for ecological enhancement and fire hazard reduction throughout California. She is passionate about business and is dedicated to training new entrepreneurs and practitioners in the prescribed grazing field, as well as, to providing consultation and technical assistance services for climate-smart agricultural and land stewardship.
Photo by Thomas Gutierrez
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June 5-8, 2025
The Center for Regenerative Agriculture at Jalama Canyon Ranch
3635 Jalama Rd, Lompoc, CA
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Full tuition, including meals and snacks: $1450
We also offer a limited number of half and quarter scholarships. Please apply here by February 15, 2025 if you require financial assistance.
Kiss the Ground also offers scholarship funding for this course.
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Tent camping on site: $15 per night
Shared cabin on site: $75 per night
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Apply here by February 15, 2025.
Scholarship applications are due February 15, 2025.
Note: by signing up for one or more of programs, you will be added to our general mailing list to receive updates on our programs.
