Echo Prescribed Fire Oct 2024 Before and After

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

For several years now, we have been collaborating with Cal Fire to implement a 10-year Vegetation Management Program (VMP). The program relies on safely reintroducing fire as an effective land management tool. This approach makes our landscape more fire-resilient, reducing fuel loads that can contribute to severe burning.

On Friday, October 25, 2024, Cal Fire successfully conducted a prescribed burn on TomKat Ranch, achieving several of our key land management goals:

• Reinitiating the natural cycling of minerals and carbon stored in dense, aging vegetation.
• Opening the canopy to allow sunlight to reach the soil fostering species diversity and renewal.
• Beginning the shift from older to new growth, which provides more palatable and nutritious forage for wildlife and livestock.
• Reintroducing fire to a landscape that Indigenous people managed with fire for thousands of years.
• Reducing the fuel load which helps lower the risk of catastrophic wildfires in our community.

Collaborating with Cal Fire on prescribed burns is one of the ways we’re working to restore the coastal landscape that once relied on natural fire cycles. We also use our cattle and goat grazing program to simulate the role of native herbivores, whose natural grazing kept vegetation in balance and contributed to ecosystem diversity. Together, these practices of fire and grazing can work in harmony to help return our ranchlands to a state that sustained California for millennia, long before colonial influences altered those natural rhythms.

Thank you for supporting this ongoing journey to create a resilient and thriving landscape for future generations.

Warm regards, TomKat Ranch Team