Is carbon offset a boon or a scam?
Jeanne Carver runs Shaniko Wool Company. The company is new but the family has been sheep ranching on their family land since the 19th Century under the name Imperial Stock Ranch for much of that time. Since the 1970s, Jeanne told us, American businesses have been choosing to save cost and increase profits by importing wool and lamb instead of buying them from American ranchers. Consequently many ranchers have gotten out of ranching because they couldn’t make ends meet. She is one of the few family operations left in Oregon who continues to raise sheep for wool and meat.
The reason they could continue while others have failed is because they chose to do it regeneratively. Their ranch in Maupin is on the east side of the Cascades mountains. The tall mountains block the rain from the Oregon coast, making the east side high dessert. Annual rainfall there averaged about 10 inches in previous decades, but lately, it has halved to about 5 inches. Jeanne and her husband Dan Carver worked with their local Wasco Soil and Water Conservation District to put in 150 water catchment ponds throughout their land to provide water for their sheep. This reduced the need for pumping water from aquifers, and also saves a lot of running costs.
They also got funding to put in fencing to enable rotational grazing. The trick to quickly move sheep from one pasture to another, she…