Marin RCD: Enhancing Shared Resources by Stewarding Private Lands
Resource Conservation Districts work hand-in-hand with land managers to conserve and restore natural resources and provide community benefits.
The need to protect and conserve our natural resources has been a public concern for decades but rarely has the issue felt more urgent than today. For the past 50-plus years, the Marin Resource Conservation District (Marin RCD) has been working to conserve and enhance the county’s natural resources — including soil, water, vegetation, and wildlife — and help solve some of our most challenging environmental issues by providing technical assistance and educational resources to Marin landowners and land managers.
Marin County has a rich agricultural heritage that remains foundational to our community. Our district comprises approximately 250,000 acres including the watersheds of Stemple, Walker, and Lagunitas creeks. Our county’s agricultural health and productivity rely on the application of practices that conserve and enhance our natural resources.
Marin RCD works to improve the health of our county’s working landscapes to ensure our agricultural community thrives. Since its founding, Marin RCD has administered more than 25 million dollars in government and private foundation grants to provide ecosystem benefits such as increasing biodiversity, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, sequestering carbon, creating wildlife habitats, and restoring water quality. The results of this work are promising. In recent years, two of our watersheds have witnessed rebounds in endangered coho salmon populations.
A Half Century of Building Trust
The infrastructure for resource conservation districts was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to the environmental and economic catastrophes of the Dust Bowl Era. In a letter to all State Governors from 1937, President Roosevelt underscored the importance of working to collectively engage farmers and ranchers as a critical part of the climate solution:
“The dust storms and floods of the last few years have underscored the importance of programs to control soil erosion… We are confronted with the fact that, for the [erosion] problem to be adequately dealt with, the erodible land in every watershed must be brought under some form of control… The Act [Standard State Soil Conservation Districts Law] provides for the organization of ‘soil conservation districts’ as governmental subdivisions of the State to carry on projects for erosion control, and to enact into law land-use regulations concerning soil erosion… Such legislation is imperative to enable farmers to take the necessary cooperative action.”
Founded as the Marin County Soil Conservation District in 1959, the district was formed to serve landowners and stewards at their request and provide them with on-the-ground, innovative technical assistance to best manage their land for multi-generational climate resilience. Over the decades, the Marin RCD’s work has evolved and expanded to meet the growing needs of land stewards and encompass all natural resource conservation efforts. Yet throughout these changes, its mission has remained grounded in a shared spirit of cooperation that enables farmers, ranchers, and stewards to work together to take meaningful action.
Here’s a brief summary of how Marin RCD’s projects have evolved over the decades:
— During the 1960s, sustainable agriculture and the goal to keep sediment out of Tomales Bay were the focus through cross-fencing, pasture improvement, and ponds and water development.
— In the 1970s, water quality became critical for the dairy industry leading to manure management system installations and upgrades that protected surface water and provided nutrients for pasture management.
— The 1980s was a period focused on erosion control to repair degrading headcuts and eroding streambanks, through which USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service practices and bioengineering techniques were adapted and brought to Marin farms.
— During the 1990s, priority was placed on stream ecosystem restoration through control fencing and native tree and shrub planting. In the last ten years, climate change, local food systems, stream flow, and instream habitat have received more attention.
— Today the Marin RCD and its partners are coordinating all of these objectives with focused attention on Justice, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Marin RCD continues to improve and coordinate carbon farm planning and practice implementation while providing leadership for new countywide initiatives, including the successful approval of a new quarter cent sales tax measure to support county-wide 2030 Climate Action Plan goals, a Marin County Biomass Study, and the Marin Carbon Project.
What began as a commitment to support ranch productivity through soil erosion protection and pasture improvement evolved into helping agriculture be a positive force for the environment and our communities. Today, Marin RCD is proud to be a trusted community partner that works to ensure land owners have the tools and resources to take the steps necessary to protect our shared ecosystems — with benefits for farmers and the public at large.
A Focus on Supporting Private Land Stewards
All land, whether publicly or privately held, is managed in some way — and land management practices can either actively degrade or restore the environment. Stewardship and preservation make Marin’s rolling hills and scenic landscapes more climate-resilient. Nature does not know property boundaries, which means our work to protect our land and natural resources must also work beyond those limitations.
The majority of public land in the U.S. is managed by the four major federal land management agencies — Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service in the Department of the Interior, and the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture — which manage a combined 606.5 million acres, or 95% of publicly owned land in the U.S. While Marin County is the beneficiary of an abundance of public land, more than half of the land in our county is privately held. Resource conservation districts are positioned to engage private landowners to adopt voluntary land conservation plans with long-term community benefits.
In Marin County, approximately 343 family farms and 1,274 farmworkers work on 160,000 acres of land. These local farms provide our community with food and fiber, support a thriving and robust local food system, and create a sustainable supply chain for grocers, restaurants and farmers’ markets. Managed agricultural lands help reduce wildfire risks through grazing grasslands and firebreak roads. As members of an interconnected community and as consumers of farm products, we all have a vested interest in how our food and fiber are produced and how our agricultural land is managed and supported.
Working directly with private landowners enables Marin RCD to generate meaningful public benefits. RCDs work directly with many partners and private land managers to ensure climate-smart and community-positive land stewardship models. By connecting with working lands, examining the implications of how that land is managed, and actively supporting land stewards, we can start to identify opportunities to strengthen our shared ecosystems and enact practical solutions in collaboration with land managers.
Program Spotlight: Carbon Farming
Today, one of the significant ways Marin RCD is working with private land managers to produce public benefits is through its carbon farming program. Traditional farming can deplete soil and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Through the implementation of carbon farming practices, farmers and ranchers can actively restore soil while sequestering carbon dioxide and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon farming has the potential to increase agricultural productivity naturally while strengthening the resilience of our food and fiber systems.
Carbon farming includes practices such as planting riparian areas, cover crops, not tilling the soil, prescribed grazing, establishing hedgerows, and applying compost to rangeland. Carbon farming practices can improve soil health, water holding capacity, crop and forage productivity, water conservation, on-farm habitat, biodiversity, and climate resiliency. The benefits extend beyond individual property lines to the public at large through the enhancement of shared watershed resources, increased resilience, and the inclusivity of disenfranchised communities.
Marin RCD provides farmers and ranchers with financial and technical assistance for the planning, design, and implementation of carbon beneficial practices. As of 2020, Marin RCD and partners in the Marin Carbon Project have completed 19 Carbon Farm Plans.
One example of this work in action is Toluma Farms, Tamara Hicks and David Jablons completed a carbon farm plan and immediately got to work, applying compost and installing hedgerows. They are now working on riparian restoration. It is a collaborative effort involving Point Blue Conservation Science, Marin Agricultural Land Trust and the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.
Through programs like Carbon Farming, Marin RCD makes critical contributions to the health, well-being, and resilience of our communities that extend beyond private boundaries. By examining the implications of our land management practices, we can engage in solutions that restore and protect our natural resources.
The Resource Conservation Network gathers and shares the stories and ideas from its partners and colleagues. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the RCDs managing this publication.
