Livestock & Land Program

Are you interested in…
• Enriching your animal’s health
• Improving chore efficiency
• Enhancing your land’s aesthetics
• Improving safety
• Reducing flies
• And possibly even increasing your property’s value

Then the Livestock and Land program is for you!

The Livestock and Land program offers assistance to livestock property owners in implementing Best Management Practices (BMPs) through:
• Funding for land improvements
• Free site visits and consultations
• Workshops and trainings
• Publications and brochures

What are Best Management Practices (BMPs)?

Best Management Practices (BMPs) are practices that you can use on your land to address concerns such as erosion, drainage, mud and manure. By successfully managing these issues you can drastically improve the health of your property and local natural resources. In addition to addressing the challenges listed above, installing BMPs on your property can improve local water quality, improve air quality, boost neighborhood relationships and encourage community collaboration.

Wild horses might roam up to twenty-five miles a day for food, water and shelter. Their continual movement disperses manure and urine and allows for regrowth of vegetation. With domestic horses, owners provide food and safe shelter. Consequently these practices can unintentionally damage delicate surface and ground water supplies and have detrimental effects on our local water resources, recreational activities and the environment.

Program History
Nutrients, pathogens and sediments from livestock facilities are pollutants of concern in the major watersheds of Santa Cruz, San Benito, South Santa Clara and Monterey Counties. This pollution critically impacts our drinking water, recreation areas, fisheries health and flora and fauna habitat. Better management of manure and drainage on properties that house livestock can lessen these pollutants.

To address these challenges, the State Water Resources Control Board awarded Ecology Action a grant to create the Livestock and Land Program. The program aims to achieve immediate and lasting water quality and watershed improvements by educating livestock owners on Best Management Practices (BMPs). The educational opportunities are conveyed via workshops, technical trainings and demonstration projects. By raising the awareness in the community we will achieve the cultural changes necessary for healthy livestock and watershed management.

To achieve this goal, Ecology Action partnered with the Santa Cruz County Resource Conservation Districts (RCD) to being programming in 2005. The success of the initial grant has allowed us to expand the project to Monterey County, and continue the Livestock and Land Program through 2009.