4 ms·

Wild animal grazing where we're not killing them and breeding more every year has tremendous environmental benefits. Killing them and eating them is not compati

by dqv 3y ago

Wild animal grazing where we're not killing them and breeding more every year has tremendous environmental benefits. Killing them and eating them is not compatible with the environmental benefits of grazing: >Small numbers of grazers may be consistent with healthy ecosystems and have minimal greenhouse gas impact, but only if their populations stay within ecologically defined limits. https://newrepublic.com/article/163735/myth-regenerative-ranching https://newrepublic.com/article/163735/myth-regenerative-ran...

justrealist 3y ago
Taking as a given that we've eliminated 99% of natural predators, there's nothing inherently ecologically wrong with humans eating cattle instead of wolves eating bison.
- jwells89 3y ago
  I believe the distinction here is scale. The rate at which natural predators killed bison is only a small fraction of the rate that cattle are killed for food. If human livestock consumption were closely matched to natural grazer consumption, essentially acting as a 1:1 replacement, this argument makes more sense. I don’t think that’s been true for at least a century at this point though.
  - justrealist 3y ago
    I agree with this, I was disagreeing with the broad complaint in the OP > Killing them and eating them is not compatible with the environmental benefits of grazing which does not attempt to qualify the disagreement at all.
  - e93849 3y ago
    Citation needed. A quick Google search says the US has about 90 million heads of cattle, while the peak population of wild bison was 60 million and of wild deer was 40 million. That seems pretty close.
    - dqv 3y ago
      >That seems pretty close. You're wildly off in your calculations because you've failed to account for replacement rate. It's 90 million heads of cattle with 30 million killed each year. https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/rx913p88g https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/rx913p...
      - e93849 3y ago
        How many wild bison/deer/elk got killed each year? Right now it seems about 2/3 of fawns die, most of them eaten by predators: https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jwmg.21681 https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jwmg.21... I wonder if that number was higher before humans reduced the number of predators.
ticviking 3y ago
The number of grazers that are needed to maintain a prairie or plains ecosystem is far higher than most people assume, and vast spaces in the US are becoming forested because of lack of wildlands management.
- dqv 3y ago
  OK, we need a lot of grazers. That still doesn't really help with the fact that 30 million bovines are killed and "restocked" on a yearly basis. If the argument is "we can keep eating meat at the current rate because we need a lot of grazers", I don't think it's a very good one. Whatever carbon sequestering benefits we were supposed to get are almost immediately invalidated. It's the same issue with trees - you don't realize the carbon sequestering benefits of planting trees until they've been alive along enough to offset the input carbon.

by dqv 3y ago

justrealist 3y ago

Taking as a given that we've eliminated 99% of natural predators, there's nothing inherently ecologically wrong with humans eating cattle instead of wolves eating bison.

jwells89 3y ago
I believe the distinction here is scale. The rate at which natural predators killed bison is only a small fraction of the rate that cattle are killed for food. If human livestock consumption were closely matched to natural grazer consumption, essentially acting as a 1:1 replacement, this argument makes more sense. I don’t think that’s been true for at least a century at this point though.
- justrealist 3y ago
  I agree with this, I was disagreeing with the broad complaint in the OP > Killing them and eating them is not compatible with the environmental benefits of grazing which does not attempt to qualify the disagreement at all.
- e93849 3y ago
  Citation needed. A quick Google search says the US has about 90 million heads of cattle, while the peak population of wild bison was 60 million and of wild deer was 40 million. That seems pretty close.
  - dqv 3y ago
    >That seems pretty close. You're wildly off in your calculations because you've failed to account for replacement rate. It's 90 million heads of cattle with 30 million killed each year. https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/rx913p88g https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/rx913p...
    - e93849 3y ago
      How many wild bison/deer/elk got killed each year? Right now it seems about 2/3 of fawns die, most of them eaten by predators: https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jwmg.21681 https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jwmg.21... I wonder if that number was higher before humans reduced the number of predators.

ticviking 3y ago

The number of grazers that are needed to maintain a prairie or plains ecosystem is far higher than most people assume, and vast spaces in the US are becoming forested because of lack of wildlands management.

dqv 3y ago
OK, we need a lot of grazers. That still doesn't really help with the fact that 30 million bovines are killed and "restocked" on a yearly basis. If the argument is "we can keep eating meat at the current rate because we need a lot of grazers", I don't think it's a very good one. Whatever carbon sequestering benefits we were supposed to get are almost immediately invalidated. It's the same issue with trees - you don't realize the carbon sequestering benefits of planting trees until they've been alive along enough to offset the input carbon.