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Nowadays, an alternative, and possibly greater, source of economic value might be as a carbon sink. I'm curious if some of this pasture land might be more heav
by bunderbunder 8y ago
Nowadays, an alternative, and possibly greater, source of economic value might be as a carbon sink.
I'm curious if some of this pasture land might be more heavily forested if it weren't being grazed. Out where my folks live in Colorado, for example, it's striking to see how anything that's anywhere close to flat enough for cattle to walk on is scrubland, but the sides of the mountains are well-forested. I'm no ecologist, but I doubt that's because trees just happen to only grow well on steep terrain.
- Hupriene 8y agoThat might be true, but to establish that state we'd have to kill off the native grazers. People tend to forget that before we had vast herds of domestic cattle in the western plains we had vast herds of bison, antelope, etc.
- bunderbunder 8y agoThe vast herds of bison is an interesting example. I read in some book on pre-Columbian history or other that the prairie that existed in North America when Europeans first showed up was a product of human activity. It seems that folks living in the Great Plains started burning down forests to create more grazing land for bison, in order to have larger bison herds for hunting. re: antelope, I thought they were browsers and not grazers.
- davidw 8y agoIndeed. Above, I mentioned the sage grouse. Those don't do well in areas where juniper trees have encroached. They like the wide open plains of sage. https://www.earthfix.info/news/article/juniper-trees-sage-grouse/ https://www.earthfix.info/news/article/juniper-trees-sage-gr... And juniper trees aren't exactly a 'forest' like most people would think of one.