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For reasons I won't go into the farming lobby is really strong in Iceland. Sheep run free-range around the entire island, if you'd like to grow something that

by avar 9y ago

For reasons I won't go into the farming lobby is really strong in Iceland. Sheep run free-range around the entire island, if you'd like to grow something that sheep like to eat you need to fence it in. It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in. Thus the sheep range far and wide and destroy Iceland's native low-lying forests. Iceland's native crooked birch hasn't developed resistance to grazing animals as mainland trees had to do, the sheep love to nibble at them and eat the seedlings. The native trees and other native vegetation are generally much hardier than the foreign plants. But since the forestry service has lost the battle with the farming lobby they're desperately trying to introduce some trees that the sheep won't eat. Reforesting the country is largely being done through subsidies to farmers, who aren't concerned with topsoil preservation beyond maintaining the desolate landscape they inherited, but they are interested in the eventual promise of a commercial forest on their land. Which is something to keep in mind when reading articles like these and wondering "why don't they...", usually the answer is that they're planting in a field that's going to be full of grazing animals, and there's no way the forestry service is going to win that battle anytime soon, or that they're not really aiming to restore the topsoil per-se, but to do that as a side-effect of commercial logging. This page has some more details: http://www.skogur.is/english/forestry-in-a-treeless-land/ http://www.skogur.is/english/forestry-in-a-treeless-land/

Isamu 9y ago
I agree, you'd have to carefully protect your trees until they reach a reasonable size that they can hold their own. Sheep will definitely prevent reforestation, although they are less likely than goats to harm saplings of a certain size.
- mark-r 9y ago
  The problem is that "carefully protect your trees" doesn't scale. And it's completely impossible for natural propagation, which is the only realistic way of meeting the goal of reforestation.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
TallGuyShort 9y ago
>> It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in. It's an exception and not the rule, as you're saying, but I know of at least a few spots in the Rocky Mountains in the US where farmed cattle graze openly and property owners have to let them. The ones I'm thinking of I think became that way because it was a permanent condition of the sale of the property in smaller parcels (i.e. the original owner parceled it up for cabins but retained grazing rights in perpetuity). But it's in areas where they actually want to keep vegetation in check to mitigate forest fires.
- refurb 9y ago
  Yes, out west many states have "free grazing" laws. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_range https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_range
  - plussed_reader 9y ago
    See: Cliven Bundy
    - poulsbohemian 9y ago
      Came to post exactly this. Once upon a time there were vast western lands open for grazing. There were even "wars" fought between cattle and sheep ranchers over grazing rights. Today the feds have closed off many areas -- for example, if I understand correctly, in the Hells Canyon area there were once 300,000+ sheep left to graze, where today there are effectively none. Certainly there were areas that were significantly damaged by overgrazing and a better balance for the public good was needed. That stated, one of the counter arguments is that it started with the ranchers, then the feds come along and close the roads, soon the public forests become inaccessible and unused altogether. There are a lot more public lands in the west apart from the major national parks. Certainly the Bundy's approach missed the mark in terms of articulating their arguments on this issue.
      - Gargoyle 9y ago
vidarh 9y ago
> Sheep run free-range around the entire island, if you'd like to grow something that sheep like to eat you need to fence it in. It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in. This is the case in at least Norway as well - it's certainly not unique to Iceland. Though I assume environmental effect of it in Iceland is compounded by the climate.
- joveian 9y ago
  Also in Syria apparently (this article also has a dramatic picture of what happens when land is fenced in away from grazing): http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2871076/overgrazing_and_desertification_in_the_syrian_steppe_are_the_root_causes_of_war.html http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2871076/overg...
ckinnan 9y ago
There is actually a similar problem in the Northeastern United States. Deer are overpopulated (in my area 6x traditional level) because they have no predators and hunting is restricted. The deer eat all of the hardwood saplings. In many mid-Atlantic forests there are very few 10-20 year old hard wood trees, they don't survive the deer.
- pizzetta 9y ago
  And the deer overpopulation also contributes to the Lyme disease tick problem.
  - zaroth 9y ago
    Which we have a perfectly good vaccine for but it was shelved purely out of FUD! http://legacy.wbur.org/2012/06/27/lyme-vaccine http://legacy.wbur.org/2012/06/27/lyme-vaccine
    - ghaff 9y ago
      "Perfectly good" is an overstatement. Efficacy wasn't that great (80% or so) and there was some evidence of side effects. Overall, the vaccine should almost certainly have not been taken off the market but it's not a near-perfect vaccine vs. FUD story either. See, for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/
      - sliverstorm 9y ago
        You may not need a higher efficacy, herd immunity does not require 100%. Chart of herd immunity thresholds for some diseases: https://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/assets/img/herd-immunity/image-02-large.jpg https://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/assets/img/herd-immunity/im...
        oh_sigh 9y ago
        Lyme disease isn't passed from human to human so herd immunity is irrelevant.
cpr 9y ago
I saw the same thing on the island of Achill, Ireland. All sheep are allowed to roam the island freely, so if you want anything protected, you have to fence it in. And there are no trees to speak of. That could either be because of the harsh winds on this almost-westernmost point of Ireland, or (never thought of this until now) it could be the sheep. The government pays people 50 pounds per sheep per annum, so people just let their sheep roam forever, unshorn, spray-painted with each owner's distinct colors. (Disclaimer: probably ignorant observations from an outsider, taking a couple of our girls to the world-class Irish music camp they hold each year.)
- smcl 9y ago
  Pounds in Ireland? I was curious if that was a typo or an old fact from pre-Euro days so I dug around a little about this subsidy/stipend, but couldn't find anything. Any ideas what it could be?
  - jamesblonde 9y ago
    Maybe cpr is british?
  - clort 9y ago
    Irish used Pounds (Punt in Irish language) before and use the Euro now but they still refer to units of money as 'quid' over there
- CalRobert 9y ago
  There's a gorgeous tiny forest on the Beara peninsula that I visit whenever I can. I think it's my favourite place on the whole island (Beara as a whole is happily underrated and relatively lightly touristed). However, it's fenced in by old stone walls, and I was dismayed to see someone had driven a tractor through said wall the last time I visited and there were at least a couple sheep munching away in there.
joshuaheard 9y ago
The article was pay-walled, but I think I got a better explanation right here.
meritt 9y ago
I was recently in Orkney, which has the same issue regarding sheep and trees, and happened to catch the crime in progress: https://i.imgur.com/fEXWccm.gifv https://i.imgur.com/fEXWccm.gifv
jimcsharp 9y ago
If they legalized sheep hunting, farmers would build fences.
- thebooktocome 9y ago
  Sheep aren't very fun to hunt though.
  - sdenton4 9y ago
    OTOH, it's really hard to hide from them in iceland, what with the total lack of trees. Just a different kind of challenge...
    - mywittyname 9y ago
      360-noscope irl.
mannigfaltig 9y ago
The same actually happened in Spain 400 years ago. There used to be a lot of forests in Spain: http://m.dw.com/en/spain-replants-after-centuries-of-deforestation/a-16774319 http://m.dw.com/en/spain-replants-after-centuries-of-defores...
njarboe 9y ago
I was in Iceland a few weeks ago and the people, museums, info plaques, etc. talked about deforestation and how the early settlers chopped down all the forests. Also mentioned was forestation and how they were slowly replanting. The grazing by horses and sheep were never mentioned as a problem. I did hear about how flocks of sheep are just let loose in the highlands in the summer to graze and the sheep herders separate out the flocks in big festivals in the fall. Similar to the old time Spanish rodeos in California. This article obliquely mentions the sheep problem but only by saying: Mr. Jonsson and his volunteers then plant the appropriate species for the plot — birch, Sitka spruce, lodgepole pine, Russian larch or other species. “We’d love to plant aspen,” he said. “But sheep really love aspen.” Sheep may love aspen but they will eat all the other trees also. I did not realize this was the main reason there was only grass everywhere until, when up on top of the Skógafoss waterfall, there was this[1] little island in the river covered in a little mini-forest. This rocky island would not be a very good place for trees to grow compared to the nice soil under the grassy fields around it, but since nothing could graze on the island, the trees could grow up. [1] https://njarboe.com/iceland/IcelandTreeIslandSkogafoss.jpg https://njarboe.com/iceland/IcelandTreeIslandSkogafoss.jpg (The trees on this island are only about 4 feet tall)
- ddoolin 9y ago
  That photo is a sharp (and fascinating) reinforcement of the grazing sheep point. Is there any other reason those trees would grow clustered right there and nowhere else? Was that area not accessible by sheep?
  - njarboe 9y ago
    As you can see somewhat in the photo, this island is isolated from grazing by the river and the steep rocky sides of the island. You could probably get a mountain goat to climb up there with some prodding, but sheep and horses that range on the slopes behind wouldn't.
- avar 9y ago
  The tl;dr of Iceland's colonization is: Norse settlers arrive, placement in society is based on how big of a farmer you are. Thus they overgraze and unlike their native Scandinavia they're doing this on a volcanic island with really thin topsoil, so the overgrazing leads to runaway topsoil erosion and dustbowlification. This leads to desperate logging of the last of the trees around for firewood and housing. It's never remotely recovered, but that process is slowly starting just now. I was trying to find a photo like the one you just posted but couldn't. There's lots of examples like that where the plant biodiversity in an area where the sheep can't get to is night & day compared to the area right next to it where they can. Which is not to say that those specific trees are old growth forest or anything like that. Icelanders pretty much lived in mud huts until after WWII in large parts of the country. If the sheep didn't get to a place like that some guy would have certainly swam over there to gather firewood. But it'll have been left alone by sheep and man in the last several decades, which as you can see makes a huge difference. Edit: Here's an even more stunning photo of an island in the middle of a river that because of the depth of the river has been left alone by both man & grazers: http://www.skogur.is/media/frettir-2014/myndasafn-storar/Videy-i-Thjorsa.jpg http://www.skogur.is/media/frettir-2014/myndasafn-storar/Vid... The accompanying article (in Icelandic, but it translates ok-ish) says that compared to the land around it it has a lot more biodiversity and a better topsoil, similar to other areas in the country protected from grazers that they've studied: http://www.skogur.is/um-skograekt-rikisins/vidburdir/2014/04/25/eventnr/89 http://www.skogur.is/um-skograekt-rikisins/vidburdir/2014/04...
phkahler 9y ago
They probably have to let the sheep roam because there isn't enough food if they fence them in. Here is a nice video on farming practices that might reverse desertificaiton: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl... Not sure if that would apply to Iceland, but it seems reasonable for someone to try it.
- spraak 9y ago
  Allan Savory's theories are wildly unsound and have been debunked... But it seems like good intention.
  - phkahler 9y ago
    Except that the land they tried his ideas on really did start growing stuff again. Nobody refuted the results he shows in the presentation. What may have been "debunked" is the notion that it's somehow good in terms of CO2 production, but even that isn't clear to me - plants take CO2 out of the atmosphere, and animals put it back.
    - spraak 9y ago
      https://youtu.be/_EDpuQMpyYw https://youtu.be/_EDpuQMpyYw
otakucode 9y ago
I just finished listening to 'Collapse' by Jared Diamond and it goes over Iceland a bit. They've got serious ecological problems because of soil. Most of their soil comes from light volcanic ash, which replenishes at a much lower rate than other places with tons of vegetation and rivers and other things contributing.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Soil, generally, is surprisingly delicate stuff. It accumulates at the rate of about an inch per century under natural conditions on such abundant landscapes as the US plains. That's slow, but over the 10,000 year span since the last ice age, it's enough for 100 inches or so to accumulate (about 250 cm). Much of that isn't deposited but fixed from the air by plants which then decay in place, though the freshly-arrived material often provides vital micronutrients -- itself a problem in Australia where the lack of geological activity means that there is very little of these materials, limiting ag productivity. In regions with harsh climates and short growing seasons (e.g., Iceland), there's little time for soil-forming processes to set hold, and the slight progress made can be undone quickly. Even in places that appear full of life, conditions may remove soil or nutrients, e.g., tropical rainforest. If I think of things that may bring doom to humans, I tend to think a lot about dirt and bugs and plankton and algae.
dmix 9y ago
I'm confused, there's no private property laws to prevent farm animals from grazing on non-farm property? Nor is there crown land to build national parks with giant forests? An effective farm lobby wouldn't be able to affect either of those things in almost any other western countries... The problem doesn't seem to be the lobbyist but some strange lack of fundamental laws, if the government can be coerced into allowing this to happen by industry. Unless you're saying the farm industrying (with grazing animals) controls a massive amount of land? They say only 1% is tree covered, I can't imagine they own such a large amount that they can't find any significant amounts of land to plant trees...
- meheleventyone 9y ago
  There are a bunch of reasons from tradition in terms of letting sheep roam free to farming always having been a source of power. Further you have other weird facets like the votes of people in the countryside being worth twice those in Reykjavik. But basically for a long time farming and fishing controlled a lot of voting power. Although the traditional party of the farmers is on the wane now. The whole country has the population of a medium sized town so it’s on the whole very similar but also very different to larger countries.
- avar 9y ago
  First of all you have to understand that private property in Scandinavia and Iceland works differently than it does in say the US. It's more appropriately phrased as a "limited land-use right", and the land use is always for a particular narrow purpose. So for example, if you buy a farm and put a fence around it I'm still free to walk across your property to get to where I'm going, because farms are intended for farming, and as long as I'm not unduly interrupting that you have no standing to stop me. I can also set up a tent overnight on your farm as long as I don't unduly bother you, i.e. set it up too close to your house, I need to pick up all my trash etc. Now, back to your question. During the summer the sheep wander around and graze on any grass they can find, and due to precedence going back to colonization (where everyone who mattered was sheep farmer anyway) if you'd like them not to do that it's your responsibility to set up a fence around your property, and of course the sheep are likely to start eating there first since sheep are lazy and go for the easy pickings first. But this only applies to sheep, not e.g. cows, and that's entirely to do with ongoing lobbying not just by the farming industry, but people in rural areas that hold disproportionate sway in parliament. There are successful reforestation efforts going on in Iceland, but most of these are in park-like areas near municipalities. There's not enough money being spent on this to fence wast swaths of land. But yes, you could of course buy land, fence it off, and start planting trees on it. But that's expensive and not very lucrative, so very few farmers are doing that to make money. There are big national parks, but they're almost all in areas that would be the last to regain any topsoil, i.e. in the highlands around glaciers.
tryingagainbro 9y ago
Interesting. The main problem seems to be the short growing season, no? From my experience after a few years, sheep cannot do much to trees, in fact many leave them unattended it their orchards. Granted some eat the skin and such sheep are kept away but most do not. I guess Iceland needs to compensate sheep farming for a few years, so the trees grow. But even then, sheep will eat any new saplings, meaning humans will have to be involved "forever." I left about an acre without being tilled for 3 years and now they are more than 1000 saplings--wind did it's magic from trees 50+ yards away. I am going to fertilize about 100 of them and keep it as it is. In 10 years, I'll no longer need to buy firewood, which is a way better return financially for that particular plot. Not to mention the environmental side benefits.
bluepeter 9y ago
Open range is a thing in the Western US too.
tomohawk 9y ago
In West Virginia there's a similar thing going on with deer. There's so many deer that there's actually a browse line up to where the deer can't reach, and the forests are pretty unhealthy as a result.
samstave 9y ago
cool so what do you suggest?
barretts 9y ago
Wow. If accurate, you've done a better job explaining the situation in 250 words than the entire NYT article did.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
atmosx 9y ago
Somewhat relevant video[1]. The introduction of wolves changed the entire landscape by pushing the deers out of the some areas. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q

by avar 9y ago

Isamu 9y ago

I agree, you'd have to carefully protect your trees until they reach a reasonable size that they can hold their own. Sheep will definitely prevent reforestation, although they are less likely than goats to harm saplings of a certain size.

mark-r 9y ago
The problem is that "carefully protect your trees" doesn't scale. And it's completely impossible for natural propagation, which is the only realistic way of meeting the goal of reforestation.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

TallGuyShort 9y ago

>> It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in. It's an exception and not the rule, as you're saying, but I know of at least a few spots in the Rocky Mountains in the US where farmed cattle graze openly and property owners have to let them. The ones I'm thinking of I think became that way because it was a permanent condition of the sale of the property in smaller parcels (i.e. the original owner parceled it up for cabins but retained grazing rights in perpetuity). But it's in areas where they actually want to keep vegetation in check to mitigate forest fires.

refurb 9y ago
Yes, out west many states have "free grazing" laws. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_range https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_range
- plussed_reader 9y ago
  See: Cliven Bundy
  - poulsbohemian 9y ago
    Came to post exactly this. Once upon a time there were vast western lands open for grazing. There were even "wars" fought between cattle and sheep ranchers over grazing rights. Today the feds have closed off many areas -- for example, if I understand correctly, in the Hells Canyon area there were once 300,000+ sheep left to graze, where today there are effectively none. Certainly there were areas that were significantly damaged by overgrazing and a better balance for the public good was needed. That stated, one of the counter arguments is that it started with the ranchers, then the feds come along and close the roads, soon the public forests become inaccessible and unused altogether. There are a lot more public lands in the west apart from the major national parks. Certainly the Bundy's approach missed the mark in terms of articulating their arguments on this issue.
    - Gargoyle 9y ago

vidarh 9y ago

> Sheep run free-range around the entire island, if you'd like to grow something that sheep like to eat you need to fence it in. It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in. This is the case in at least Norway as well - it's certainly not unique to Iceland. Though I assume environmental effect of it in Iceland is compounded by the climate.

joveian 9y ago
Also in Syria apparently (this article also has a dramatic picture of what happens when land is fenced in away from grazing): http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2871076/overgrazing_and_desertification_in_the_syrian_steppe_are_the_root_causes_of_war.html http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2871076/overg...

ckinnan 9y ago

There is actually a similar problem in the Northeastern United States. Deer are overpopulated (in my area 6x traditional level) because they have no predators and hunting is restricted. The deer eat all of the hardwood saplings. In many mid-Atlantic forests there are very few 10-20 year old hard wood trees, they don't survive the deer.

pizzetta 9y ago
And the deer overpopulation also contributes to the Lyme disease tick problem.
- zaroth 9y ago
  Which we have a perfectly good vaccine for but it was shelved purely out of FUD! http://legacy.wbur.org/2012/06/27/lyme-vaccine http://legacy.wbur.org/2012/06/27/lyme-vaccine
  - ghaff 9y ago
    "Perfectly good" is an overstatement. Efficacy wasn't that great (80% or so) and there was some evidence of side effects. Overall, the vaccine should almost certainly have not been taken off the market but it's not a near-perfect vaccine vs. FUD story either. See, for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/
    - sliverstorm 9y ago
      You may not need a higher efficacy, herd immunity does not require 100%. Chart of herd immunity thresholds for some diseases: https://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/assets/img/herd-immunity/image-02-large.jpg https://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/assets/img/herd-immunity/im...
      - oh_sigh 9y ago
        Lyme disease isn't passed from human to human so herd immunity is irrelevant.

cpr 9y ago

I saw the same thing on the island of Achill, Ireland. All sheep are allowed to roam the island freely, so if you want anything protected, you have to fence it in. And there are no trees to speak of. That could either be because of the harsh winds on this almost-westernmost point of Ireland, or (never thought of this until now) it could be the sheep. The government pays people 50 pounds per sheep per annum, so people just let their sheep roam forever, unshorn, spray-painted with each owner's distinct colors. (Disclaimer: probably ignorant observations from an outsider, taking a couple of our girls to the world-class Irish music camp they hold each year.)

smcl 9y ago
Pounds in Ireland? I was curious if that was a typo or an old fact from pre-Euro days so I dug around a little about this subsidy/stipend, but couldn't find anything. Any ideas what it could be?
- jamesblonde 9y ago
  Maybe cpr is british?
- clort 9y ago
  Irish used Pounds (Punt in Irish language) before and use the Euro now but they still refer to units of money as 'quid' over there
CalRobert 9y ago
There's a gorgeous tiny forest on the Beara peninsula that I visit whenever I can. I think it's my favourite place on the whole island (Beara as a whole is happily underrated and relatively lightly touristed). However, it's fenced in by old stone walls, and I was dismayed to see someone had driven a tractor through said wall the last time I visited and there were at least a couple sheep munching away in there.

joshuaheard 9y ago

The article was pay-walled, but I think I got a better explanation right here.

meritt 9y ago

I was recently in Orkney, which has the same issue regarding sheep and trees, and happened to catch the crime in progress: https://i.imgur.com/fEXWccm.gifv https://i.imgur.com/fEXWccm.gifv

jimcsharp 9y ago

If they legalized sheep hunting, farmers would build fences.

thebooktocome 9y ago
Sheep aren't very fun to hunt though.
- sdenton4 9y ago
  OTOH, it's really hard to hide from them in iceland, what with the total lack of trees. Just a different kind of challenge...
  - mywittyname 9y ago
    360-noscope irl.

mannigfaltig 9y ago

The same actually happened in Spain 400 years ago. There used to be a lot of forests in Spain: http://m.dw.com/en/spain-replants-after-centuries-of-deforestation/a-16774319 http://m.dw.com/en/spain-replants-after-centuries-of-defores...

njarboe 9y ago

I was in Iceland a few weeks ago and the people, museums, info plaques, etc. talked about deforestation and how the early settlers chopped down all the forests. Also mentioned was forestation and how they were slowly replanting. The grazing by horses and sheep were never mentioned as a problem. I did hear about how flocks of sheep are just let loose in the highlands in the summer to graze and the sheep herders separate out the flocks in big festivals in the fall. Similar to the old time Spanish rodeos in California. This article obliquely mentions the sheep problem but only by saying: Mr. Jonsson and his volunteers then plant the appropriate species for the plot — birch, Sitka spruce, lodgepole pine, Russian larch or other species. “We’d love to plant aspen,” he said. “But sheep really love aspen.” Sheep may love aspen but they will eat all the other trees also. I did not realize this was the main reason there was only grass everywhere until, when up on top of the Skógafoss waterfall, there was this[1] little island in the river covered in a little mini-forest. This rocky island would not be a very good place for trees to grow compared to the nice soil under the grassy fields around it, but since nothing could graze on the island, the trees could grow up. [1] https://njarboe.com/iceland/IcelandTreeIslandSkogafoss.jpg https://njarboe.com/iceland/IcelandTreeIslandSkogafoss.jpg (The trees on this island are only about 4 feet tall)

ddoolin 9y ago
That photo is a sharp (and fascinating) reinforcement of the grazing sheep point. Is there any other reason those trees would grow clustered right there and nowhere else? Was that area not accessible by sheep?
- njarboe 9y ago
  As you can see somewhat in the photo, this island is isolated from grazing by the river and the steep rocky sides of the island. You could probably get a mountain goat to climb up there with some prodding, but sheep and horses that range on the slopes behind wouldn't.
avar 9y ago
The tl;dr of Iceland's colonization is: Norse settlers arrive, placement in society is based on how big of a farmer you are. Thus they overgraze and unlike their native Scandinavia they're doing this on a volcanic island with really thin topsoil, so the overgrazing leads to runaway topsoil erosion and dustbowlification. This leads to desperate logging of the last of the trees around for firewood and housing. It's never remotely recovered, but that process is slowly starting just now. I was trying to find a photo like the one you just posted but couldn't. There's lots of examples like that where the plant biodiversity in an area where the sheep can't get to is night & day compared to the area right next to it where they can. Which is not to say that those specific trees are old growth forest or anything like that. Icelanders pretty much lived in mud huts until after WWII in large parts of the country. If the sheep didn't get to a place like that some guy would have certainly swam over there to gather firewood. But it'll have been left alone by sheep and man in the last several decades, which as you can see makes a huge difference. Edit: Here's an even more stunning photo of an island in the middle of a river that because of the depth of the river has been left alone by both man & grazers: http://www.skogur.is/media/frettir-2014/myndasafn-storar/Videy-i-Thjorsa.jpg http://www.skogur.is/media/frettir-2014/myndasafn-storar/Vid... The accompanying article (in Icelandic, but it translates ok-ish) says that compared to the land around it it has a lot more biodiversity and a better topsoil, similar to other areas in the country protected from grazers that they've studied: http://www.skogur.is/um-skograekt-rikisins/vidburdir/2014/04/25/eventnr/89 http://www.skogur.is/um-skograekt-rikisins/vidburdir/2014/04...

phkahler 9y ago

They probably have to let the sheep roam because there isn't enough food if they fence them in. Here is a nice video on farming practices that might reverse desertificaiton: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl... Not sure if that would apply to Iceland, but it seems reasonable for someone to try it.

spraak 9y ago
Allan Savory's theories are wildly unsound and have been debunked... But it seems like good intention.
- phkahler 9y ago
  Except that the land they tried his ideas on really did start growing stuff again. Nobody refuted the results he shows in the presentation. What may have been "debunked" is the notion that it's somehow good in terms of CO2 production, but even that isn't clear to me - plants take CO2 out of the atmosphere, and animals put it back.
  - spraak 9y ago
    https://youtu.be/_EDpuQMpyYw https://youtu.be/_EDpuQMpyYw

otakucode 9y ago

I just finished listening to 'Collapse' by Jared Diamond and it goes over Iceland a bit. They've got serious ecological problems because of soil. Most of their soil comes from light volcanic ash, which replenishes at a much lower rate than other places with tons of vegetation and rivers and other things contributing.

dredmorbius 9y ago
Soil, generally, is surprisingly delicate stuff. It accumulates at the rate of about an inch per century under natural conditions on such abundant landscapes as the US plains. That's slow, but over the 10,000 year span since the last ice age, it's enough for 100 inches or so to accumulate (about 250 cm). Much of that isn't deposited but fixed from the air by plants which then decay in place, though the freshly-arrived material often provides vital micronutrients -- itself a problem in Australia where the lack of geological activity means that there is very little of these materials, limiting ag productivity. In regions with harsh climates and short growing seasons (e.g., Iceland), there's little time for soil-forming processes to set hold, and the slight progress made can be undone quickly. Even in places that appear full of life, conditions may remove soil or nutrients, e.g., tropical rainforest. If I think of things that may bring doom to humans, I tend to think a lot about dirt and bugs and plankton and algae.

dmix 9y ago

I'm confused, there's no private property laws to prevent farm animals from grazing on non-farm property? Nor is there crown land to build national parks with giant forests? An effective farm lobby wouldn't be able to affect either of those things in almost any other western countries... The problem doesn't seem to be the lobbyist but some strange lack of fundamental laws, if the government can be coerced into allowing this to happen by industry. Unless you're saying the farm industrying (with grazing animals) controls a massive amount of land? They say only 1% is tree covered, I can't imagine they own such a large amount that they can't find any significant amounts of land to plant trees...

meheleventyone 9y ago
There are a bunch of reasons from tradition in terms of letting sheep roam free to farming always having been a source of power. Further you have other weird facets like the votes of people in the countryside being worth twice those in Reykjavik. But basically for a long time farming and fishing controlled a lot of voting power. Although the traditional party of the farmers is on the wane now. The whole country has the population of a medium sized town so it’s on the whole very similar but also very different to larger countries.
avar 9y ago
First of all you have to understand that private property in Scandinavia and Iceland works differently than it does in say the US. It's more appropriately phrased as a "limited land-use right", and the land use is always for a particular narrow purpose. So for example, if you buy a farm and put a fence around it I'm still free to walk across your property to get to where I'm going, because farms are intended for farming, and as long as I'm not unduly interrupting that you have no standing to stop me. I can also set up a tent overnight on your farm as long as I don't unduly bother you, i.e. set it up too close to your house, I need to pick up all my trash etc. Now, back to your question. During the summer the sheep wander around and graze on any grass they can find, and due to precedence going back to colonization (where everyone who mattered was sheep farmer anyway) if you'd like them not to do that it's your responsibility to set up a fence around your property, and of course the sheep are likely to start eating there first since sheep are lazy and go for the easy pickings first. But this only applies to sheep, not e.g. cows, and that's entirely to do with ongoing lobbying not just by the farming industry, but people in rural areas that hold disproportionate sway in parliament. There are successful reforestation efforts going on in Iceland, but most of these are in park-like areas near municipalities. There's not enough money being spent on this to fence wast swaths of land. But yes, you could of course buy land, fence it off, and start planting trees on it. But that's expensive and not very lucrative, so very few farmers are doing that to make money. There are big national parks, but they're almost all in areas that would be the last to regain any topsoil, i.e. in the highlands around glaciers.

tryingagainbro 9y ago

Interesting. The main problem seems to be the short growing season, no? From my experience after a few years, sheep cannot do much to trees, in fact many leave them unattended it their orchards. Granted some eat the skin and such sheep are kept away but most do not. I guess Iceland needs to compensate sheep farming for a few years, so the trees grow. But even then, sheep will eat any new saplings, meaning humans will have to be involved "forever." I left about an acre without being tilled for 3 years and now they are more than 1000 saplings--wind did it's magic from trees 50+ yards away. I am going to fertilize about 100 of them and keep it as it is. In 10 years, I'll no longer need to buy firewood, which is a way better return financially for that particular plot. Not to mention the environmental side benefits.

bluepeter 9y ago

Open range is a thing in the Western US too.

tomohawk 9y ago

In West Virginia there's a similar thing going on with deer. There's so many deer that there's actually a browse line up to where the deer can't reach, and the forests are pretty unhealthy as a result.

samstave 9y ago

cool so what do you suggest?

barretts 9y ago

Wow. If accurate, you've done a better job explaining the situation in 250 words than the entire NYT article did.

deleted 9y ago

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atmosx 9y ago

Somewhat relevant video[1]. The introduction of wolves changed the entire landscape by pushing the deers out of the some areas. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q