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On May 16, more than 2,000 sheep were moved from the Thousand Trails San Benito campground near Cienega Road back to their normal grazing areas on the Paicines Ranch after having done their duty.
For five days, the sheep had been staying at the campground doing what sheep do: eating their way through 33 acres of tall, dry grass as part of the ranch’s efforts to reduce the possibility of grassland fires.
According to the 2024 Community Wildfire Protection Plan: “San Benito County faces an escalating risk of wildfires that threaten the lives of residents, damage homes and property, disrupt livelihoods, and pose risks to critical infrastructure such as power lines and water supplies, as well as the destruction of ecosystems, which provide habitat for local wildlife and contribute to biodiversity, further compounds the crisis.”
Paicines Ranch is a regional leader in regenerative grazing and participates in county-level wildfire prevention efforts. Its managed grazing systems—including sheep as part of multi-species rotations—help reduce grass biomass and contribute to the broader fuel-reduction goals outlined in the Wildfire Protection Plan.
Stephany Westberg, manager of Thousand Trails, said sheep were used rather than hiring a human crew to do the job because the sheep work faster, cheaper, and do a better job of clearing the land.
“They can clear a lot more effectively,” she said. “They’ll also go into poison oak or hemlock. If we send a team of men in, they would have to have proper PPE [personal protective equipment] to protect themselves.”
Westberg said the ranch borders the campground on three sides, so it’s easy to bring the sheep in to begin grazing.
“We just bring them in from one side, we cordon off a portion of our property, and then we’re gonna bring them out the other side,” she said. “Then they’ll return after Memorial Day, and they’ll do the other side of the creek area.”
She said people camping in RVs enjoy seeing the sheep and watching the guard dogs protecting them.
“They’ll have three to four dogs, typically,” she said. “There are two different types of dogs. There are what I call the ‘watching dogs.’ They will stay with them throughout the night. They protect them from the coyotes. And then there are the herding dogs. They are usually younger, a lot faster, and they’ll just run circles around them to push the flock.”
She said the $5,000 it cost to use the sheep to clear up to 100 acres was a bargain compared to paying for a team of men, plus machinery and fuel.
As Westberg was talking to this reporter during a visit to the campground, the flock— made up mainly of hews and lambs—began to stir and move in a tight circle as an ATV approached the animals and two dogs charged around the fringes of the flock from the far end of the field. Then the dogs worked in tandem as they began moving the flock toward the ranch as the ATV driver stopped nearby and pulled off her helmet.
Martha Skelly, the ranch’s livestock manager, described the sheep as “ecological tools to manage rangeland.” She said the breed is known as “dorper” and that in addition to their ecological use they are raised for their high-quality meat rather than wool.
“We’ve had the sheep since 2020,” she said. “They’re a great tool for fire mitigation and fuel management, as well as meeting our ecological goals, which is biodiversity of our rangeland.”
A few minutes later, the dogs, Shep and Reba, were pushing the flock between RVs toward a creek and back onto the ranch. Skelly said the sheep do not like crossing creek beds, but the dogs kept them moving forward, if reluctantly.
The entire flock quickly made it through the dry creek—except for two lambs.
One was tangled in tall weeds and the other simply stopped in the middle of the creek bed and did not appear to know where to go as it was left behind. A lanky ranch employee named Garrett McKee, known as the sheep lead, hefted each of them under his arms and followed the flock through a cloud of dust and disappeared into tall grass on the ranch.
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