I’m confused here because didn’t they think cows were causing methane problems (separate issue?) and why don’t cows help take CO2 out of air compared to bison? So could just having a lot more big animals (other animals mentioned in article I think?) help take CO2 out of the air, or is this kind of like the trillion trees project which was plants now being applied to animals… will it work? No? Thoughts on the situation?
(obligatory I’m not a biologist)
Looking at the article, it seems like the influence bison have is by stimulating and cycling the ecosystem in Romania. In other words, they graze across the area, eating the plants and shitting out the waste. This helps pump more nutrients into the environment, helping even more plants grow. It’s those extra plants that remove and store CO2. Interestingly, the fairly new series America’s National Parks covers the benefits Bison bring to ecosystems in s1e4 (Badlands National Park). Def worth a watch if you want to learn more about the most beautiful parts of America.
As far as the comparison to cows, I think the biggest reason cows emit so much methane is the diet we feed them. They don’t just graze free across massive tracts of grassland. They are fed mostly corn and corn byproducts, supplemented with grasses, and digesting the corn is (I think) the source of the methane problems.
Corn is insidious.
This!! Corn is in everything and animal food is the worst! Cats don’t eat corn!
A bi part of this is also that they will not be hunted and will be wild…
There is a lot of stuff about how areas where cattle graze, the roots of plants are far healthier and grow far deeper, as opposed to in agriculture where the roots are shallow because the plants are constantly harvested.
Yes, the bison make a great contribution here, but I think the real listen is that rewilding any space at all contributes to helping the environment.
thanks
well so then it sounds like we could just have a bunch of grass fed cows to improve the CO2 situation (have more ranchers switch to grass fed instead of feeding them corn)… that might be easier than introducing more bison everywhere, although that could be done as well I guess