A Stanford student describes an early morning eco-walk around that university’s vast holdings. A well-written account of hidden Stanford.
… This ambitious annual event, now in its fourth year, takes a select group of undergraduates, biologists, professors and others on a 21-mile walk around the perimeter of Stanford land… By exploring the outer reaches of campus, Walk the Farm aims to use Stanford as a microcosm of the American West to display the changes climate change has wrought on the environment.
… The first thing I learned from the Walk – Stanford supports a heck of a lot of cows. More cows than any university should know what to do with…
May 4th, 2010 at 11:02AM
“More cows than any university [that doesn’t have a Department of Dairy Science or isn’t a land grant university] should know what to do with.”
May 5th, 2010 at 4:35PM
Since I actually know the lease-holders — the cattle don’t belong to Stanford. In addition to Webb Ranch (which farms primarily corn and row berries) there’s Rancho Viejo (lease is into its second generation), which runs cattle west of 280, and I believe David Murdoch has the cattle lease around Felt Reservoir (or Felt Lake, as it is known locally).
Wikipedia says the campus is 8,183 acres, including the Stanford Shopping Center, the hospital/clinic campus, the Industrial park, and the open-space/grazing land mentioned in the article.
The “million gallons a day” works out to 122 gallons per acre — pretty modest amount.
I dare say the golf course and the landscaping in the Industrial Park take up a lot more water than the palm trees.