Controlled Animal Impact: Part Two

The grasslands of the world, for all of their variation in species, climates, soil types, and hydrology, all have one thing in common.  They all have evolutionarily adapted to various forms of herbivory (meaning the plants have been consumed in some fashion or another).  Whether it was a butterfly larvae consuming all the leaves on a milkweed plant in preparation for its pupation or a ground squirrel sucking a plant down into its tunnel or a large, intense gathering of elephants eating everything in site before leaving an area for months or years, grassland plants have come to withstand, even thrive by being consumed.  Many grasslands, especially in moister environments, will quickly become shrublands or forestlands if herbivory is removed from a site.  That is the case in many places where cattle grazing has been suspended.  This picture above shows oak trees regenerating and thriving  (but not taking over) with rotational grazing of grassfed steers.

Countless research shows that you cannot paint animal grazing as either good or bad.  It depends on a number of factors, including how the ecosystem has (or has not) adapted to grazing disturbances in the past, the climatic patterns and hydrology of the site, the plant species and communities themselves, and of course, the actual human management of the grazing animals.

Well-managed grazing lands are shown to sequester significantly higher quantities of soil carbon, much more so than most row crops systems.  The only row crop systems that are close in terms of carbon sequestration are no-till organic systems.

Although I don't have pictures, I have heard that in the California wildfires of recent years, many of the only homeowners that managed to save their homes also kept goat herds on their property.  A friend of mine who runs a for-hire goat grazing operation is regularly employed by highway departments, utility companies, and public reservoirs because of how goats remove the brush and ladder fuels preventing catastrophic wildfires.

Of course, there will always be animal production systems that counter my positive points above.  They all boil down to management.  Usually it is one of the following greatly simplified situations:

1. Too many animals on a site for too long.

2. Too few animals on a site for too long.

3. Wrong time of the year.

4. The wrong kind of animals on a site given the hydrology, vegetation, climate, etc.

5. Lack of shade, water, and proper habitats for animals to be comfortable and thrive.

6. Lack of rotation and rest periods that are crucial for plant root development, breakdown of manures, and control of animal diseases and parasites.

This photo is from the Holistic Management website, which is a trademarked grazing education system used all over the world.  You can see the strong correlation between management and environmental benefits (or destruction).  Even with the same levels of rainfall and soil types, the field on the right was managed using Holistic Management principles (essentially, looking at the whole) and the field on the left was grazed continuously with little management effort.

Comments

[Adam]

Is the grassland too vast to do controlled burns? Would introducing bison, for instance, likely result in an ecological catastrophe? Would there be a way of releasing sterile cows and/or steers and allowing them to remain relatively free and without slaughter? If so, I'm on board.

[[H. sapiens is just another species, but most members of said species possess the ability to deliberate and are moral agents. As such, we are different from (though, not superior to) non-deliberative animals (including H. sapiens). Because of our capacities we are obligated to act in respect of other members of our (biological) community. This does not mean "let things be," so much as not colonizing others' spaces and places through the regime of scientific and corporate management.]]

[Rebecca T. of HonestMeat]

Humans and other animals make use of their environment and create changes in the landscape, either intentionally or not. Have you ever seen what a herd of elephants do to a watering hole? How about how beavers dam up creeks and create lakes while building their homes? If, as you say, humans are no different than any other animal, we are also no different in that we use our environment.
We should 'manage' the lands that we abused. It is a science called ecological restoration.
The extent of shrublands has unnaturally increased due to fire suppression, so we either need to let things burn, or we need to manage them in other ways, such as through controlled grazing.

[Adam]

SarahDowntoEarth writes: "The nature of humanity is to modify and manipulate our environment to make it more suitable for our living... who'd like to go back to living in trees and caves, for instance?"

Personally, I find this definition of human nature very uncreative and problematic. Exactly who is human and who/what is "our environment." This ideology is rooted in the patriarchal, stewardship philosophy of Abrahamic religions. This was the logic behind "manifest destiny" and other colonialist policies to put all of nature (and those associated with it) under White Man's Reason. There need be no dichotomy between altering an ecological community and living in one humbly.

On another note, 1) why must we "manage" these lands instead of letting them grow wildly? 2) Is a grazing animal now locally extinct so in order to preserve the pre-colonial ecosystem we must "manage" it? Or, 3) is this simply an excuse for people to entrepreneurial uses of these wild habits and the profiteering off cows and steers? 4) What is "bad" or undesirable about the transformation of these grasslands into shrub lands--especially if they would anyways without any human intervention?

[Sara DowntoEarth]

Thank you for pointing out that grazing (and most of our production practices) are neither all-good nor all-bad.

The nature of humanity is to modify and manipulate our environment to make it more suitable for our living. That is not inherently bad; who'd like to go back to living in trees and caves, for instance? That same intelligence that leads us to modify, however, needs to be employed at every step to evaluate the big picture and long term impact.

[Nathan]

It's some sort of coincidence that you posted this today, because earlier today I spent way too much time reading this: http://nmag.soton.ac.uk/tf/permaculture/, a lengthly transcript of Bill Mollison's course on permaculture and land use. There's a long section on grasslands and grazing, and water management using the keyline system and soil conditioning. Some of it is a little out there, some if it is hard to understand because it was originally a lecture so it's hard to tell when he's joking, but he makes a lot of very perceptive observations.

I look forward to talking with you at the market about it.