Ranching Could Help Curb Global Warming
Cattle ranching gets blamed for all kinds of ills from global warming to green house gasses while we’re constantly being reminded that red meat is bad for our health. Yet when I travel throughout the west’s great range and ranch lands, full of cattle and wildlife under big “clean” skies I simply don’t buy that rhetoric. I’m Susan Allen stay tuned for Open Range. I grew in the suburbs of Portland and watched the land I rode my horses across developed into subdivisions and strip malls, never be to be returned to hay fields, forests or filbert orchards, ever! In the US's most liberal green city, Portland Or I never saw or heard of environmentalist activist dogging developers, in fact I was quite alone as I watched with tears in my eyes as the dozers stripped the land down to brown dirt. Looking back many years latter I still find it odd no one else in my community seemed to care. Yet half a days drive to the dry side of the state, ranchers are constantly besieged by lawsuit after lawsuit from urbanite environmental groups with names like Earth First, Save Our Salmon, the Northwest Environmental Defense Fund etc.. Certainly ranching alters the land, but unlike vacant strip malls it can make it more productive as evidenced by research from North Dakota State University that found that well managed rotational grazing actually improves natural grasslands. In fact land that was allowed to rest between grazing increased vegetation 45 percent. It appears environmentalists are beginning to comprehend the value of responsible ranching . The 2010 September issue of Time magazine reported that healthy grasslands are extremely critical in curbing global warming, of even more value than forests when you consider that nearly half of the US is covered in native grass and pastures. More information on this subject can be found at Minnesota's Land Stewardship Project, The Savory Institute, North Dakota State Univeristsy Dept of Rangland Resources.
