As major exponents of greenhouse gases that warm the Earth, what cows consume is increasingly gaining attention from scientists trying to apply the brakes to global methane emissions. The latest promising discovery in this area comes from an international team of researchers, who have found that livestock plant food grown in warmer climates leads to higher methane releases, and could potentially be inhibiting milk and meat production at the same time.
Methane emitted by cows, or from any source for that matter, is a problem because it is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, due to its superior heat-trapping abilities. Meanwhile, global meat production is on the rise, from 71 million tons in 1961 to 318 million tons in 2014.
So scientists have been looking at the effects of livestock diets, and how they might be tweaked to reduce the amount of methane produced by the world’s growing bovine population. Last year, Australian scientists identified a strain of seaweed that can reduce methane emissions by 99 percent, while earlier this year another research team discovered that feeding cows tropical leaves in addition to regular food could cause also cause sharp decline.
The latest research doesn’t unearth new dietary supplements, rather it reveals an already existing culprit. Scientists from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Scotland’s Rural College, and the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt studied published data on forage quality, and found that nutritional value of grass was reduced at higher temperatures.
This is turn makes it harder for grazing livestock to digest the plants, and the scientists say there are a few reasons that might be. The extra heat causes plants to adapt and they may flower earlier, produce thicker leaves or possibly allow tougher invasive plants to spread into new areas and replace more nutritious species. With the plants tougher to digest, they spend longer inside the animal and produce more gas, and the scientists say this is setting in motion a vicious cycle.
“The vicious cycle we are seeing now is that ruminant livestock such as cattle produce methane which warms our planet,” says Dr. Mark Lee, a research fellow at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. “This warmer environment alters plants so they are tougher to digest, and so each mouthful spends more time in the animals’ stomach, producing more methane, further warming the planet, and the cycle continues. We need to make changes to livestock diets to make them more environmentally sustainable.”
With an eye to the future, the scientists used published empirical models to estimate how changes to the climate will impact global methane production. They found that methane production increased by 0.9 percent with a 1 °C temperature rise (1.8 °F), and by 4.5 percent with a 5 °C rise (9 °F). They expect this to be a worldwide trend, but did identify hotspots in North America, Central/Eastern Europe and Asia, places where livestock farming is increasing and climate change is expected to hit hardest.
“Now is the time to act, because the demand for meat-rich diets is increasing around the world,” says Lee. “Our research has shown that cultivating more nutritious plants may help us to combat the challenges of warmer temperatures.”
The research paper was published in the journal Biogeosciences.
A vicious cycle of climate change, cattle diet and rising methane has been revealed in a new scientific study: as temperatures rise, forage plants get tougher and harder to digest, and cause more methane to be produced in bovine stomachs. And with cattle numbers rising and methane 85 times more powerful a greenhouse gas over 20 years, that spells trouble.
This warmer environment alters plants so they are tougher to digest, and so each mouthful spends more time in the animals’ stomach, producing more methane, further warming the planet, and the cycle continues.
Plants growing in warmer conditions are tougher and have lower nutritional value to grazing livestock, inhibiting milk and meat yields and raising the amount of methane released by the animals.
That’s because more methane is produced when plants are tougher to digest – an effect of a warmer environment.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, around 25 times better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide over a century, and 85 times stronger over 20 years.
More than 95% of the methane produced by cows comes from their breath through eructation (belching) as they chew the cud.
The findings come in a published a paper today in the journal Biogeosciences by scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) and the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt.
The key finding is a near doubling of ruminant emissions of methane: “Upscaling the GHG footprint of the current livestock inventory to the 2050 projected inventory increases annual GHG emissions from enteric sources from 2.8 to 4.7 GT CO2eq.”
Dr Mark Lee, a research fellow at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew who led the research says; “The vicious cycle we are seeing now is that ruminant livestock such as cattle produce methane which warms our planet.
“This warmer environment alters plants so they are tougher to digest, and so each mouthful spends more time in the animals’ stomach, producing more methane, further warming the planet, and the cycle continues. We need to make changes to livestock diets to make them more environmentally sustainable.”
Harsher climate makes tougher plants
There are several reasons why rising temperatures may make plants tougher for grazing livestock to digest. Plants have adaptations to prevent heat damage, they can flower earlier, have thicker leaves or in some cases, tougher plants can invade into new areas replacing more nutritious species – all of which makes grazing more difficult.
This is a pressing concern, because climate change is likely to make plants tougher for grazing cattle, increasing the amount of methane that the animals breathe out into the atmosphere.
The researchers mapped the regions where methane produced by cattle will increase to the greatest extent as the result of reductions in plant nutritional quality. Methane production is generally expected to increase all around the world, with hotspots identified in North America, Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia, where the effects of climate change may be the most severe.
Many of these regions are where livestock farming is growing most rapidly. For example, meat production has increased annually by around 3.4% across Asia, compared with a more modest 1% increase across Europe.
The calculations, write the scientists, “suggested a previously undescribed positive climate change feedback, where elevated temperatures reduce grass nutritive value and correspondingly may increase methane production by 0.9% with a 1C temperature rise and 4.5% with a 5C rise (model average), thus creating an additional climate forcing effect.
“Future methane production increases are expected to be largest in parts of North America, central and eastern Europe and Asia, with the geographical extent of hotspots increasing under a high emissions scenario.”
Act now to limit the damage!
Global meat production has increased rapidly in recent years to meet demand, from 71 million tonnes in 1961 to 318 million tonnes in 2014, a 78% increase in 53 years (FAOSTAT, 2016). Grazing lands have expanded to support this production, particularly across Asia and South America, and now cover 35 million km2; 30% of the Earth’s ice-free surface.
However, livestock are valuable. They are worth in excess of $1.4 trillion to the global economy and livestock farming sustains or employs 1.3 billion people around the world (Thornton, 2010). The upward trend in livestock production and associated GHG emissions are projected to continue in the future and global stocks of cattle, goats and sheep are expected to reach 6.3 billion by 2050 (Steinfeld et al. 2006).
If these rises are to continue then the researchers say it will be necessary to limit the growth of livestock farming in the most rapidly warming regions, and, to avoid significant losses in livestock production efficiency and increases in methane emissions. Other measures, including eating less meat and farming more sustainably, are also essential:
“A global switch in human diets and a transition to more sustainable agricultural practices, as well as a greater prevalence of organic and silvopastoral farming, may reduce our reliance on intensively farmed cattle and other ruminants.
“In countries with high or increasing meat consumption, these measures could reduce the environmental impacts of agriculture and contribute to GHG emissions cuts with an associated improvement in human health.”
And the authors emphasise that we need to start implementing policy measures as soon as possible. “Now is the time to act,” said Dr Lee, “because the demand for meat-rich diets is increasing around the world. Our research has shown that cultivating more nutritious plants may help us to combat the challenges of warmer temperatures.
We are undertaking work at Kew to identify the native forage plants that are associated with high meat and milk production and less methane, attempting to increase their presence on the grazing landscape. We are also developing our models to identify regions where livestock are going to be exposed to reductions in forage quality with greater precision.
It is going to be important to put plans in place to help those countries exposed to the most severe challenges from climate change to adapt to a changing world.”
Oliver Tickell is contributing editor at The Ecologist.
If big cats don’t kill livestock, farmers won’t shoot them
Feb 23rd 2017 | SAN MARTÍN, META DEPARTMENT
RANCHERS in Colombia’s Meta department can be vengeful folk. From time to time jaguars emerge from a clump of forest, streak across the savannah and attack one of a panic-stricken herd of cows. When that happens, ranchers hunt the offender down and shoot it. That practice is endangering the cats’ survival. Panthera, a charity that manages “corridors” for jaguars that stretch from Argentina to Mexico, guesses that just 5,000 of the cats are left in los llanos, Colombia’s scorching savannah. It has come up with a less violent way of protecting both the jaguars and the cattle.
The idea is to teach cattle self-defence, or rather to breed the instinct into them. The cows that graze in los llanos are mostly Zebu, which are popular with ranchers for their fast growth, large size and white hides. But they have an unfortunate habit of fleeing in all directions when danger approaches. Panthera’s idea is to replace panicky Zebu with cattle that stand their ground, or to interbreed the two. Esteban Payán, who directs Panthera’s operations in northern South America, chose San Martineros, a little-known subspecies of Criollo cattle descended from Spanish fighting bulls. Few jaguars dare to challenge a massed group of 500kg (1,100-pound) San Martineros, their horns levelled. Docile with humans, they are fierce defenders of territory and their young. Mr Payán recounts that San Martineros chased away a puma before it could eat a capybara it had killed in their paddock.
Full Story: http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21717415-if-big-cats-dont-kill-livestock-farmers-wont-shoot-them-breeding-cows-can-defend
LARAMIE, Wyo. – The public lands management agencies announced the grazing fee for federal allotments today, which the federal government has decreased to a mere $1.87 per cow and her calf (or 5 sheep) per month, known as an Animal Unit Month, or AUM.
“This has got to be the cheapest all-you-can-eat buffet deal in the country,” said Erik Molvar, Executive Director of Western Watersheds Project. “Our public lands are a national treasure that should be protected for future generations with responsible stewardship. It makes no sense to rent them to ranchers for below-market prices to prop up a dying industry that degrades soil productivity, water, wildlife habitat, and the health of the land.”
Two hundred and twenty million acres of public lands in the West are used for private livestock industry profits through the management of approximately 22,000 grazing permits. The low fee leaves the federal program at an overwhelming deficit. This year’s fee is a a decrease of 11 percent from last year’s fee of $2.11 per AUM far less than the average cost for private lands grazing leases. The fee is calculated using a decades-old formula that takes into account the price of fuel and the price of beef, and this year’s fee falls far below the level of $2.31 per AUM that was charged in 1980. Additionally, the fee doesn’t cover the cost to taxpayers of range infrastructure, erosion control, vegetation manipulation, and government predator killing – all indirect subsidies that expand the program’s total deficit.
“The subsidy to public lands livestock grazers just got bigger,” Molvar said. “It’s a totally unjustified handout that persists for purely political reasons, with little or no benefit to Americans.”
Now that the focus has shifted to the upcoming trials of the outlaws who took over Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge offices last January, we might recall that the actual, physical occupation lasted for a total of 41 days. In many ways, however, it never ended, and there is every reason to conclude that the occupiers won.
The refuge’s headquarters are still closed, federal cops guard the area, and no one answers the phone. At least six staff members have left, including the fisheries expert and the ecologist. They have not been replaced.
The refuge is drier now than I have ever seen it; the usually flooded ditches along Center Patrol Road are without waterfowl. Only two ponds hold water and the birds that depend on it.
The Malheur Refuge website cautions prospective visitors: “Buildings and grounds are active work sites and are closed for safety reasons.” When I found a refuge employee in a pickup on the side of the road, I asked him what “active work site” meant. He smiled wryly and answered, “That answer would have to come from a higher pay grade.”
Cattle graze in Southeastern Oregon.
Angela Sitz/USFWS
I first visited the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in 1966, and I started teaching in the vicinity in 1973. Virtually every Memorial Day weekend since then, I have gone birding on the headquarters grounds, along with other bird watchers from the Northwest birding community and beyond. I teach a summer ornithology class now on nearby Steens Mountain, and every August I tour the refuge with my students.
But this year, we were not allowed in; in fact, a federal truck stood by the blockaded entrance to keep us out. Yet nearly a hundred days had gone by since the last occupier left, and the site had been safely visited by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Daniel M. Ashe and even Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. Both hosted the press on the “active work sites,” and no problems were reported. Ashe said that the occupiers had done damage estimated at $6 million, and now the rumor is that this venerable and beautiful oasis — once a showplace visited regularly by Supreme Justice William O. Douglas — will undergo a fancy facelift.
That makes me fear that the old buildings, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps out of pink Dufurrenasandstone in the 1930s, might be sacrificed to some Washington, D.C. architect’s vision of modernity. I doubt that the occupiers, slovenly though they reportedly were, could have done that much damage.
Meanwhile, all is not quiet on this Western front. Some or all of the 13 ranchers with grazing privileges on the refuge were going full-bore when my students and I drove north along the refuge on Aug. 12.
Thousands of acres of the Blitzen Valley part of the refuge had been mowed. Three huge double-flatbed trailered semis passed us going south, ready to welcome on board the valuable hay bales. Ranchers apparently pay with “in kind services,” which in this case means that the hay is paid for by mowing, baling and hauling it off. Because the mowing is considered beneficial to wildlife, it is considered a “service’ to the refuge and to wildlife, so little or no cash changes hands.
So ubiquitous was the haying activity I saw that it is hard to believe that it had only been going on for two days. Aug. 10 is the first day any haying efforts are allowed, in part because that is the date that most, but not all, young sandhill cranes are believed to be out of danger of being baled, along with the hay. A young crane, faced with an advancing piece of machinery, will crouch down instead of fleeing, and thus get macerated by a combine.
The first of the thousands of cattle that will graze there for the better part of nine months were visible, but I was concerned with some trespass livestock I had seen on Aug. 5, about a mile south of headquarters. I find trespassing cattle almost every year — there were cowpies last year right in front of refuge headquarters — but this year I was unable to report them, because nobody seems to be at work.
And so the occupation continues, even though most of the occupiers are safely tucked away in jail cells. The headquarters compound may be off-limits to human visitors, but the refuge is wide open for the grazing “treatments” that are allowed in order to “meet management objectives.” Sadly, the wildlife meant to find refuge in this place no longer seem to count for much.
Exposing the Big Game 