Community Impact
This year, the SMI team deepened our role as a catalyst for collaborative, community-based land stewardship. Through hands-on learning, inclusive leadership, and shared monitoring frameworks, we worked to strengthen the resilience and capacity of our regional regenerative grazing network.
One of the year’s highlights was the stockmanship workshop we co-hosted with Whit Hibbard at the Eames Institute. Whit is one of the foremost experts in low-stress stock handling in the United States and consults for and supports the biggest ranches in the country. The event brought together approximately 50 participants, offering an invaluable opportunity for operators, ranchers, and land stewards to develop practical skills in low-stress cattle handling. The workshop’s diverse audience reflected the growing inclusivity within the ranching community—with participation from female operators, BIPOC ranchers, and teams representing TomKat Ranch, Paigelynn Trotter’s Coastal Land & Livestock, Open Field Farms, and Picenas Ranch.
The gathering strengthened regional capacity for thoughtful, adaptive stockmanship, helping participants improve both animal welfare and operational efficiency. Whit Hibbard’s reflections were deeply positive; he commended the professionalism of the crew and, in a generous act of support, declined compensation for the major cattle gathering and move that we did as part of the event, underscoring the spirit of partnership that defines this work. It’s worth noting that he sees more stock handlers than most people and continually complimented our team’s care and competency.
California Data Collaboration
The SMI team continues to provide regional leadership in ecological monitoring, helping shape a shared data framework that supports consistency and collaboration across multiple grazing organizations. This cross-organizational effort enhances our collective ability to assess ecological outcomes and align management decisions with the long-term health of the land. We look forward to continuing and expanding our goals through multiple upcoming initiatives.
Regenerate Conference Presentation in Santa Fe, New Mexico
As part of Sonoma Mountain Institute’s ongoing leadership in the California Grazing Data Collaborative–a partnership that includes Point Blue Conservation Science, White Buffalo Land Trust, Paicines Ranch, TomKat Ranch, Gabilan Ranch, and others–SMI was invited to present at the Regenerate Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Byron and Shae Lynn Watt of TomKat Ranch Education Foundation led a packed session that explored how better systems for organizing and analyzing management and monitoring data might help land stewards understand patterns and relationships on the ground. Drawing from over 13 years of vegetation and soil monitoring across SMI’s 6,500 acres, Byron shared how the organization’s biodiversity has improved dramatically, while highlighting the challenge of understanding which parts of our management actions drive those outcomes, as well as discussing the variability in other indicators like native and perennial vegetation.
The talk emphasized SMI’s commitment to collaborating with other organizations and partners to develop tools that enhance the management of data, improving how it is recorded, organized, and analyzed. The goal is to help land managers make smarter, more informed decisions about trade-offs in the future, directing their energy where it matters most across a wide range of management activities.