Before and After: Prescribed Burn at TomKat Ranch South of Pescadero is a Success

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PRESS RELEASE. If you saw or smelled smoke on Friday, October 1st, 2021, midday, note that it was a prescribed burn at TomKat Ranch.

Before

 

After

 

You can watch the burn LIVE by going to ALERT WILDFIRE and South and East Bay Cameras and then Lane Hill. You can see the helicopter and the fire trucks!

You practice using the SmokePoint app.

Help firefighters locate new wildfires.

Smoke Point uses integrated Alert Wildfire cameras and observations contributed by the public to quickly triangulate the locations of new fires.

Smoke Point is actively used by firefighters and first responders in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties in California.

 

Firefighters to Conduct Prescribed Burn near Pescadero

San Mateo County Fire Department: Released: 6:00 p.m. on September 30, 2021

BELMONT, CA – Firefighters plan to conduct a prescribed burn at TomKat Ranch near Pescadero, San Mateo County on Friday, October 1, 2021. This burn is being conducted in conjunction with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which predicts favorable weather conditions this week, and TomKat Ranch.

The 30-acre burn area has been pre-treated with masticators. This prescribed fire will reduce brush on a ridge north of the town of Pescadero. If conditions become unfavorable, the burn will be postponed. Most of the burning will be conducted Friday. If additional acreage remains, the rest of the burn will take place on Saturday.

The prescribed burn is part of a multi-year collaboration and planning process to explore how prescribed burning can complement regenerative planned livestock grazing to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and improve nutrient cycling and habitat for wildlife.

“Fire treatments can help regenerate fire-tolerant plant species, such as native grasslands, and improve soil organic matter, which increases the soil’s ability to hold water,” said Kat Taylor, Founder of TomKat Ranch.“During a time of increasing drought and more destructive wildfires from climate change, California can adopt regenerative practices like prescribed burns and managed grazing to restore natural ecological cycles, and protect people and our planet.”

For more information, please contact: Cecile Juliette Public Information Officer (650) 308-9081 [email protected]

 


KPDO’s Catherine Peery Interviews CalFire Forester on the Control Burn Process at TomKat Ranch

PODCAST. KPDO’s Catherine Peery works with TomKat Ranch to get the word out on how they will go about controlled burns.  Safety for the community is their number one concern. Catherine interviews CalFire Forester Sarah Collamar, and Santa Cruz resident on  1/2021. They started planning this control burn BEFORE the August 2020 CZU fire, in the Spring of 2020.

TomKat Ranch is an 1,800 acre grassfed cattle ranch in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our team of ranchers, scientists, and advocates look to nature to guide our landscape management in support of our values. Over the next five years, we want to have inspired the transition of one million acres of California rangeland to regenerative management.

Our mission is to provide healthy food on working lands in a way that regenerates the planet and inspires others to action.

 

OUR HISTORY

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was enamored with wild places, but especially the South Coast. As a fourth grader, I was treated to a field trip to Sam McDonald County Park. There I learned that a humble man, the son of slaves and the beloved superintendent of athletic grounds and buildings at Stanford University, had quietly saved 430 acres on the upslope of the coastal range populated by live oak, Douglas fir and, redwood forest ecosystems. Sam bequeathed all of his lands to the school children of San Mateo County so that they should forever have a place in the wilds to visit. I was one of those kids. It never stopped affecting me that someone could leave such a legacy. Less than 20 years after Sam’s passing, others inspired by this generosity dedicated additional land to grow Sam McDonald County Park to 867 acres.

Years later, when I first walked onto the lands of TomKat Ranch, I realized I was having my “Sam McDonald moment.” The ranch was perfectly suited to bridge the growing, destructive, and unnecessary divides between rural and urban, tech and agriculture, and conservation and ranching communities in our society.

Tom Steyer and I started TomKat Ranch because I was inspired by my childhood experience and driven by our passion for environmental stewardship and support for rural communities. With the pickle we are in in the world today, the lands that make up TomKat Ranch will remain working lands—a learning laboratory where we can recall and learn how to cultivate food that truly nourishes, builds community, and restores our planetary health. We can find a way forward that respects the biodiversity of our commons, protects essential water resources, re-sequesters the excess carbon we have burdened our air and oceans with, and restores economic resiliency to rural populations who are among the stewards of the land.

I continue to celebrate how much I’ve learned from the work of the ranch and how it has taught me that agriculture is a seminal lever for achieving our shared goals of equity, human health, environmental sustainability, and biodiversity. Collaborations at the local, state, and nation level have been instrumental to the success of TomKat Ranch. I hope you’ll join me in this continuing journey in the wilds…

 

Kat Taylor
Founder of TomKat Ranch

 


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About KPDO Radio and Website

We are a community radio station serving Pescadero, CA and the South Coast. We are a 501c3 non-commercial, and listener-sponsored station. The station provides access to local DJ hosted shows ranging from public affairs, news, music programming, and emergency service announcements, both locally and nationally sourced. KPDO also has volunteers in the local school district to provide medial learning opportunities to local students.

Pescadero Public Radio Service (PPRS) has developed community support and good relationships with the La Honda Pescadero Unified School District, local nonprofits, and community leaders. Our most important purposes are:

– Youth Broadcast Journalism at Pescadero Schools

– Emergency Communications for Pescadero and the Southcoast

– Locally run and operated Community News and Entertainment

In order to meet our goals we have developed Youth Broadcast Journalism classes, developed procedures and protocols for the radio station in the event of emergency, recruited DJ’s and trained them to provide local news and entertainment, and have met all FCC requirements and received approvals for the legal operation of the Station, including approval of the Radio Frequency, the antenna site (currently approved on Reservoir Road), and the power, 100 watt.

 


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