Rusty said:
Some evironmentalist fanatics call cattle "land maggots" and want them removed from BLM and other grazing, citing greenhouse type gasses emitted by them. Methane is one that comes to mind.
Since buffalo and cattle can be interbred to produce beefalo, and there were once herds of millions before the coming of the white man, wouldn't they have contributed to the greenhouse effect even worse?
Just curious. I consider myself a conservationist in the old sense, who brought the deer and ducks and geese and wild turkeys and other game back from near extinction rather than an environmentalist.
Anyone know more than I do about this?
I don't know a lot about it but I do know some. As far as environmental damage from cattle on grazing on public land the main problem is that the government does not have the money to oversee the program very well.
The main problem comes from the fact that since they do not actually own the land that they have a tendency to overstock the pastures and this grazes them out. Meaning that the palatable plants are all destroyed because they are continually eaten back. What happens is the land, which belongs to all of us- erodes off because there is inadequate cover on the ground to hold the soil on. Also since the farmers don't own the land there is less of an incentive to let it rest or apply any seed or fertilizer. There is some grazing land in the national forest near the wilderness areas whrere I go backpacking and it always looks wore out. The pastures on the adjacent private land look fine. It's just like a rental house. If the landlord rents it cheap and doesn't check in the house gets tore up.
As far as methane, I think that cattle produce about a fifth of the methane world wide. One of the problems is that in the developing nations they keep a lot of dairy cattle. We have bred our dairy cattle for high production. But down there no, so they have to have way more than we do because they are not improved livestock. However as far as greenhouse gas methane is bad, but it doesn't hang around as long as carbon dioxide.
That is really where the problem is with cattle. Brazil and India I think it is have the 2 largest cattle herds worldwide. Well in Brazil they are clearing the Rainforest and burning it to turn it into pasture. Burning the rainforest is Brazil's #1 contributor of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Besides the burning putting CO2 into the atmosphere the Rainforest sucks up Co2 and puts out 02 so it's a double whammy.
I would say the story about land maggots is really just an attempt by somebody to marginalize the opinions of environmentalists. I mean somebody may have used that term somewhere, but even environmentalists know people gotta eat and make a living.
See I notice that Rusty used the term environmental fanatics. That's an industry buzzword. The coal companies here label anybody who complains about their wells getting ruined, or big boulders getting blasted in their yards "Environmental fanatics" or "enviromental extremeists" instead of concerned citizens.
I could take you to so many places where acres of hillside have slid away due to unresponsable logging or where the blasting has shaken houses off their foundations, or where slurry dams have busted and killed everything in the water. Or where you for sure better not drink the water or eat the fish. Or where the 1000 acre strip mine has caused people to be flooded out. So many places that if there were as many enviromental fanatics as they say they are I don't believe they'd be getting away with it.
