Save California's Goat Grazing Option!!
There is a chance that this could be the last year for the goats in Lake California. Hopefully, this will not happen as we have counted on the goats over the last couple of years to be a major part of our fire prevention efforts.
The below information was sent to us by the company that supplies goats to Lake California. It was taken from the go fund me page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-ca-goats?qid=2fae8c7c7c3be680ac7cece257e868a7. This is being supplied only for information purposes to our community.
Save California’s Goat Grazing Option – Our Livelihood and Your Homes are at Risk!
While 93% of the State of California in now experiencing severe drought conditions with above normal
Fire risk predicted between May and July; the tens of thousands of brush-clearing goats deployed annually across the state to reduce fire risk are in imminent danger of disappearing forever. As an unintended consequence of a recent labor legislation, small goat grazing operations like us will no longer be able to afford newly mandated exorbitant salaries for our on-site herders starting as soon as this summer.
Communities from San Diego to Marin County, Irvine to Oakland, Nevada City and more have all relied on the environmentally friendly method of goat grazing to reduce dangerous fuel ladders and create defensible space around residential areas and community land. The East Bay Regional Parks have been using cattle, sheep, and goats to help maintain vegetation for more than fifty years. Scientific research has demonstrated that grazing “has been shown to change wildfire behavior, by slowing its spread, shortening flame length, and reducing fire intensity,” as well as “directly reducing the frequency and intensity of fire by removing fire fuels”. These goats can help manage vegetation in areas that are unable to be managed by other means due to the rough terrain.
But in this historic year of drought and fire danger, California’s small, family operated goat grazing businesses are being backed into a legislative corner, with selling our goats for meat or even culling our entire herds as the only option left. Due to poorly written legislation, specifically AB 1066, our grazers are being pushed out of business as early as this summer, with no money or work left to sustain our herds.
The livestock grazing industry relies on the uniquely skilled labor of grazing employees from South America who are legally employed in the USA via H2A agricultural visas. But after over 20 years of treating Goat and Cattle Herders under the California Sheep Herders Wage rule, the California Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) and the California Employment Development Department (EDD) have decided to treat Goat and Cattle Herders radically different than Sheep Herders. Without notice or warning, California EDD is now incorrectly assuming that Goat and Cattle Herders are working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and requiring them to be paid an hourly rate. This abruptly reverses the long-standing practice of paying monthly salaries to herders (in addition to supplying food and housing), as Sheep Herders can continue to do – currently set at $2,488. /per month, or $29,867.64/per year, to $13,975/per month or $167,700. /Per year, a 5.5x increase. Operators will be unable to afford these outrageous rates that are now being forced upon them subjectively and arbitrarily.
We can not let inaccurate and poorly worded legislation kill California’s most sustainable, green, and widely used fire prevention resources during the peak fire danger we are experiencing today.