Cover artwork by Alé Silva
Summary
The introduction of cattle to western North America has undeniably contributed to massive ecosystem change. But could cows be as much a part of the solutions as they are the problem?
In this 3-part series, we're hearing from all sides of this issue: impassioned scientists and land managers with diametrically opposed opinions on the concept of "rangelands" — by some estimates, accounting for 50-70% of the earth's surface.
Part 1 kicks things off with a look at the special case of California, and a challenge to the conventional environmentalist perspective that cattle are always a destructive force for biodiversity and ecosystem health.
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Show Notes and Credits
This episode was produced by Mendel Skulski and Adam Huggins, with the voices of Ashley Ahearn, Lynn Huntsinger, and Clayton Koopmann.
With music by Thumbug, Aerialists with Isa Holmgren, Saltwater Hank, C. Diab, Sunfish Moon Light.
And thanks to Tristan Brenner, Dr. James Bartolome, Camilo Andrés Garzón Castaño, Brennen King, and Robert Alder.
This episode includes audio recorded by hanstimm (2), dobroide, joedeshon, albrigh, nmscher, CGEffex, felix.blume (2, 3, 4), jmbphilmes, BlueNeon, csengeri, IESP, tanapistorius, bfederi1, jb_stems, AnthonyRamirez, cupido-1, antoineopeng, kyles, MicrosoftSam, tim.kahn, crattray1997, iainmccurdy, hadescolossus, raulcabral, apintofmild, ThomasMillar, Bansemer, and Balaram_Mahalder, accessed through the Freesound Project, and protected by Creative Commons attribution licenses.
Citations
Amme, David. “Grassland Restoration in California,” n.d., 7.
Barry, Sheila, Stephanie Larson, and Melvin George. “California Native Grasslands: A Historical Perspective,” n.d., 6.
Barry, Sheila, and Lynn Huntsinger. “Rangeland Land-Sharing, Livestock Grazing’s Role in the Conservation of Imperiled Species.” Sustainability 13, no. 8 (April 16, 2021): 4466. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084466.
Bartolome, James W., Barbara H. Allen-Diaz, Sheila Barry, Lawrence D. Ford, Michele Hammond, Peter Hopkinson, Felix Ratcliff, Sheri Spiegal, and Michael D. White. “Grazing for Biodiversity in Californian Mediterranean Grasslands.” Rangelands 36, no. 5 (October 2014): 36–43. https://doi.org/10.2111/Rangelands-D-14-00024.1.
Foss, Roxanne. “A Review of Ecological Grazing Management Approaches Applicable to EBRPD Rangelands.” East Bay Regional Parks District, n.d.
Gennet, Sasha, Erica Spotswood, Michele Hammond, and James W. Bartolome. “Livestock Grazing Supports Native Plants and Songbirds in a California Annual Grassland.” Edited by Francisco Moreira. PLOS ONE 12, no. 6 (June 14, 2017): e0176367. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176367.
Huntsinger, Lynn, and Sheila Barry. “Grazing in California’s Mediterranean Multi-Firescapes.” Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 5 (August 24, 2021): 715366. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.715366.
Huntsinger, Lynn, and José L. Oviedo. “Ecosystem Services Are Social-Ecological Services in a Traditional Pastoral System: The Case of California’s Mediterranean Rangelands.” Ecology and Society 19, no. 1 (2014): art8. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06143-190108.
ILRI, IUCN, FAO, WWF, UNEP, and ILC. “Rangelands Atlas.” Nairobi, Kenya: ILRI, 2021.
Jerrett, M., Jina, A. S., Marlier, M. E. (2022) Up in smoke: California's greenhouse gas reductions could be wiped out by 2020 wildfires. Environmental Pollution, 310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2022.119888
Molinari, Nicole A., and Carla M. D’Antonio. “Where Have All the Wildflowers Gone? The Role of Exotic Grass Thatch.” Biological Invasions 22, no. 3 (March 2020): 957–68. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-019-02135-1.
Siegel, Katherine J., Luke Macaulay, Matthew Shapero, Theresa Becchetti, Stephanie Larson, Fadzayi E. Mashiri, Lulu Waks, Laurel Larsen, and Van Butsic. “Impacts of Livestock Grazing on the Probability of Burning in Wildfires Vary by Region and Vegetation Type in California.” Journal of Environmental Management 322 (November 2022): 116092. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.116092.
Stahlheber, Karen A., and Carla M. D’Antonio. “Using Livestock to Manage Plant Composition: A Meta-Analysis of Grazing in California Mediterranean Grasslands.” Biological Conservation 157 (January 2013): 300–308.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2012.09.008.
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Future Ecologies is recorded and produced on the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the WSÁNEĆ, Penelakut, Hwlitsum, and Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples, otherwise known as Galiano Island, British columbia, as well as the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil-Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.
Transcription
Introduction Voiceover 00:01
You are listening to Season Five of Future Ecologies
Ashley Ahearn 00:06
Test test, one, two. Test test, one, two. Yeah, that should be good. Batteries look like they're good. All right, yeah, I think I'm ready.
Adam Huggins 00:16
Hey, everyone. So it probably won't surprise you. But Mendel and I are voracious podcast listeners.
Mendel Skulski 00:24
It's true. It turns out if you listen to enough podcasts, you automatically become a podcaster.
Adam Huggins 00:30
And we must have met that threshold something like five years ago or so. And last year, I listened to a series that challenged the way that I thought about a fairly significant portion of the land on Earth.
Mendel Skulski 00:43
How... how much of the land on Earth is fairly significant?
Adam Huggins 00:48
Well, depending on the source between 50 and 70%.
Mendel Skulski 00:52
What could that be? The suburbs?
Adam Huggins 00:56
No, not not suburbs, even though they do sometimes feel like they go on forever.
Mendel Skulski 01:02
You're gonna keep me guessing. Okay, well, what was the series called?
Adam Huggins 01:06
The series is called Women's Work. And it was produced by one of my favorite podcasters, Ashley Ahearn
Ashley Ahearn 01:13
So my name is Ashley Ahern, and I make podcasts about the urban-rural divide and natural resources and climate change and science and the environment
Adam Huggins 01:23
The series emerges out of a pretty big life change that she made a little while back.
Ashley Ahearn 01:28
I guess, as a journalist, you're always looking for the story behind the story, or you have that sense when you're not getting the whole story. And I reported for NPR in Seattle for seven years as their environment reporter for the leading member station there KUOW. And I loved the job, it was wonderful place to cover the environment, so much awesome science and ecology to learn about.
Adam Huggins 01:49
The problem, she told me, is that public radio can be a bit of an echo chamber.
Ashley Ahearn 01:55
And it was really hard to get outside of that bubble, of sort of liberal-environmental groupthink about what's right for the environment, and how to manage our natural resources. From frankly, the urban jungle of Seattle where, you know, if you wear REI, it's like you're a card carrying member of the the Green Revolution, you know, which I was part of, right? Like, that's what I was doing. I was doing God's work covering the coal export terminals they were trying to build and, you know, trying to get the word out about this or that problem that was happening and how things were changing and what was broken.
Adam Huggins 02:26
But that sense that she wasn't getting the whole story, it just kept creeping up.
Ashley Ahearn 02:32
Yeah that sense that I was missing something — that these questions about how we manage our natural resources, how we live in harmony with the landscape, many of them can't be answered from the city. So my husband and I decided, five years ago now, to move to a little piece of sagebrush and live in a very, very small cabin, and just cut back and simplify and get closer to the land and closer to the environment.
Adam Huggins 02:56
Naturally, being new to town, she needed to find a way to connect with the community. And so she did what you do when you move out to sagebrush country, apparently.
Mendel Skulski 03:06
Which is?
Adam Huggins 03:07
She posted on a listserv.
Ashley Ahearn 03:08
I basically posted on the equivalent of like, our 1997, Facebook, like Reddit type thing out here where people share like "there's some loose goats on East County Road" or "I have an old horse does anybody new pasture mate", you know, blah, blah, blah. And so I posted and I just said, you know, I rode horses as a kid, I've been away from it for a long time, I just want to be around them again. I'll shovel horse poop. I will like feed, whatever you need, I just want to be near them.
Mendel Skulski 03:33
What a pitch. Who could resist?
Adam Huggins 03:35
For sure. Before long, Ashley gets a response from a local rancher.
Ashley Ahearn 03:39
And turns out she had nine horses, and there was this one little mare, Pistol. And she and I hit it off. She's kind of a pain in the ass. She's only partially trained. And she kind of does what she wants to do when she wants to do it. And this woman has become a very good friend. And about a month after I got there, she said, "I think... I think you should have Pistol. I've been sitting with this and I just think you should have her". And and that started the journey.
Adam Huggins 04:04
Because it turned out that Pistol, in some ways, helped her access the parts of the story that she felt that she had been missing before.
Ashley Ahearn 04:12
That horse carried me into this community. I can't really explain it any other way. And just the ability to show up and ride for hours and not complain and work and listen and ask sometimes really stupid questions, but to be doing it from horseback... it's like that bridge into their world that made it safe and made it different from me showing up with my microphone to do a story to bring back to my listeners in Seattle.
Adam Huggins 04:37
Her first series out in the country was about Sage Grouse. And once she'd plucked that chicken, she moved on to cows. And it's the series on cows that really captured my attention.
Ashley Ahearn 04:51
Cows are the glue of so many rural communities. They are the reason that certain types of knowledge persists. All of these kinds have hands on, call it blue collar, call it what you will, skills and strengths, to say nothing of the way that the community comes together to help each other when there's a branding that needs to happen or a roundup that needs to happen or calving season is underway.
Mendel Skulski 05:16
Okay. You say it's about cows, but the series is called Women's Work?
Adam Huggins 05:23
And that's because while most of us grew up learning all about the cowboys, Ashley's time with rancher is really impressed upon her how women are so often at the center of the work, to maintain and to create positive change in this very old way of life.
Ashley Ahearn 05:39
This is ranch life, this is cowboy shit. Like, you just get up and you work. And you work until the sun goes down. And being able to be a fly on the wall with my microphone to see that life in action was a really important part of this series. And that kind of showed me the level of work and the amount of heart that goes into the work for the women that are doing this. This is really kind of an homage to them, I would say
Adam Huggins 05:59
The series has all of these great stories of women across the West, pushing the envelope in their literal field.
Mendel Skulski 06:07
And these atraditional gender roles really flipped your worldview, huh?
Adam Huggins 06:12
No, that part was fine. Mendel. What really got under my skin was an environmental reporter, doing all of these positive stories about cows.
Mendel Skulski 06:25
What's wrong with cows? What did cows ever do to you?
Adam Huggins 06:30
I don't like cows. I don't like them professionally. I don't like them personally. I think they are gigantic, methane-emitting non-native herbivores. And they've played a pretty significant role in transforming most of the landscapes that I hold, dear. So I generally see them as a scourge upon the land.
Mendel Skulski 06:50
A scourge! So I take it you... you don't like ice cream?
Adam Huggins 06:56
Of course, I like ice cream.
Mendel Skulski 06:58
Or cheese?
Adam Huggins 06:59
I like cheese.
Mendel Skulski 07:00
Burgers?
Adam Huggins 07:01
They're okay, I guess.
Mendel Skulski 07:03
Alright, I'm just giving you a hard time. Right like, it's environmentalist orthodoxy at this point that the cows are at least a problem, right? Like there are too many of them. They're causing deforestation, they burp greenhouse gas, we should all collectively eat less beef, and so on.
Adam Huggins 07:22
Yeah, and all of those things, by the way, are basically true. So we're not even going to get into them here. They're established fact. What really got to me was the stories that Ashley was telling about cows being portrayed as beneficial to the environment, and even providing benefits for Conservation and Biodiversity.
Ashley Ahearn 07:44
If you're coming at this conversation from a place of cows are bad, we need to get rid of them — that's kind of a non starter for me. Because frankly, that's lazy thinking. To me, it's about how do we think more critically about cows? What role do they have? Because the truth is, many people in this country still eat beef. So how do we make it our beef that's raised better, more sustainably and not involving chopping down rainforests in South America to bring us beef from another country that doesn't employ Americans or keep our way of life alive in rural America.
Adam Huggins 08:14
And then, Ashley neatly summarized the entire reason that you and I make this show.
Ashley Ahearn 08:21
I think there is this perhaps outdated thinking among many environmentalists that, you know, we just need to box it up and keep it safe, right? We just need to protect it from the cows and from the people. And the older I get, the more I've come to peace with... we changed it, whether it's the climate that we're changing through our emissions, or the on the ground decisions we're making with frankly, poor cow management, which I am the first to acknowledge, because I've seen it firsthand. We can't deny that we have changed the ecosystems in which we live. And so to me, stepping back and just saying we can't make them better, or we shouldn't be involved anymore, is not okay. It's almost a shirking of responsibility. And so that's where when I look at the cow question, it's not as simple as just saying cows are bad, they weren't ever here, we need to remove them and protect this whole ecosystem from cows. What I would prefer to think about is, how can we manage cows in such a way that is not detrimental to the ecosystem and perhaps, in fact, mimics the original grazers, bison, deer, other animals that were coming through and grazing intermittently, and not extensively in the same places, ruining riparian areas, all of these kinds of known offenses that cattle commit, you know, how do we think about them as tools and a means to improve the health of a landscape or at least be part of a changed landscape going forward?
Adam Huggins 09:48
So, in this three-part series, we're going to have a wide ranging and sometimes contentious conversation about the 50 to 70% of terrestrial Earth that is referred to by some as Rangelands. And to do that, we're going to return to the part of the world that I know best. From Future Ecologies, this is Home on the Rangelands, part one, Welcome to Cowlifornia.
Mendel Skulski 10:20
Moooo.
Introduction Voiceover 10:20
Broadcasting from the unceded, shared and asserted territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh, this is Future Ecologies – exploring the shape of our world through ecology, design, and sound.
Adam Huggins 11:30
All right, here we go.
Mendel Skulski 11:32
Okay, so we're headed back to California, again.
Adam Huggins 11:36
Yep.
Mendel Skulski 11:36
But before we get started, since we do have an international audience, how representative is California really for the issues that we're going to be discussing?
Adam Huggins 11:49
That is a really good question. And it is one of the questions I've been trying to answer for myself with this series. So as always, with Future Ecologies, there are some important ways that this conversation should feel very relevant for other parts of the world. But there's also something different happening in California.
Mendel Skulski 12:08
Well, then, let's carry on.
Adam Huggins 12:10
Alright. So in my experience of growing up in California, every afternoon, like clockwork, two items emerged from the pantry — a bottle of wine, and some cheese.
Mendel Skulski 12:23
Of course, these are civilized people.
Adam Huggins 12:25
And as a kid, I didn't like either of those things. I would eat the crackers, no wine, no cheese for me. But as I grew older, and a bit more discerning, when I looked around the Bay Area, I noticed that anywhere that hadn't been turned into suburban sprawl, it's either vineyards in the valleys, or ranches up on the ridges.
Mendel Skulski 12:47
It's almost like you have this direct sense that you're consuming the landscape each and every afternoon.
Adam Huggins 12:53
Yeah, wine and cheese. And focusing in on the cheese, or on the ranches, according to the California cattlemen Association, there are over 660,000 cows in California
Mendel Skulski 13:04
That's a lot of cows!
Adam Huggins 13:05
Ranchers manage over a third of the landmass of the state.
Mendel Skulski 13:09
So we're not just talking about like, your neighborhood, your neck of the woods, this is everywhere in the state,
Adam Huggins 13:16
Everywhere. California, and of course, everywhere else west of the Rockies. Really anywhere where trees or pavement or farms aren't the predominant land cover.
Mendel Skulski 13:26
Right. And that's rangelands? What does that term actually mean?
Adam Huggins 13:32
Honestly, I have some issues with this term, which we will get into later. But for now, I will give it to you straight from one of the foremost experts on the subject.
Lynn Huntsinger 13:42
My name is Lynn Huntsinger. I'm a professor of Rangeland Ecology and Management at the University of California, Berkeley, and I find that most people don't know what rangeland is. So I'll say it's pretty much all the vegetated areas that are not commercial forest, and that includes grasslands and woodlands and shrublands.
Mendel Skulski 14:05
That's a pretty expansive definition.
Adam Huggins 14:09
It is. Rangelands folks — That's what I'm going to be calling them. The range lands people, the rangelands folks — they consider their field to encompass grasslands, prairies, savannas, woodlands, shrublands, tundra, and sometimes even deserts.
Mendel Skulski 14:25
... even deserts.
Adam Huggins 14:27
The World Wildlife Federation has mapped 14 global biomes, and rangelands encompass seven of them. So, only half, Mendel.
Mendel Skulski 14:37
And so that's why they are 50 to 70% of the Earth's surface.
Adam Huggins 14:43
Yeah. The Rangelands Atlas, just published a few years ago, pins it at 55%. But I've seen estimates as low as 30 and as high as 80%, depending on whether you include desert or tundra, and also on whether you include the approximately 15% of land that was forested in the recent past and has since been cleared for agriculture or livestock use.
Mendel Skulski 15:07
So wait, it's a... is it an ecological category? Like, is it still rangeland, even when there aren't cattle grazing on it?
Lynn Huntsinger 15:19
Well, a lot of people think that it's a land use, but it really isn't not. For us, it's really vegetation types. So we have foresters managing the forest and we handle the rest. The most common use of rangeland is for livestock grazing and for wildlife. So there are land uses mixed in there, but range people work on anything to do with the ecosystem and the ecology of the plant communities on it. Or in it.
Mendel Skulski 15:50
Okay, so everything that isn't forest.
Adam Huggins 15:54
More or less, yeah. And talking to Lynn, I got the distinct sense that rangelands folks may sometimes feel that rangelands just don't get the attention that they deserve. Especially in relation to their more popular cousins — forests.
Lynn Huntsinger 16:10
People have an unnatural love for trees. I like them too, but a tree belongs where a tree belongs. It's not necessarily good. You know, in some places,
Mendel Skulski 16:19
That's pretty hot take, for this show.
Adam Huggins 16:21
Us tree people might consider rangelands people to have an unnatural love for grass. But Lynn is unabashedly all about grass. Or rather, she is all about the rumen
Mendel Skulski 16:35
The what?
Adam Huggins 16:36
The rumen. You know, the specialized stomach of ruminants grazing animals, like cows.
Lynn Huntsinger 16:43
Grass is very hard to digest. That's why people haven't started eating it yet, despite wanting to eat everything else. Grass is full of glass particles and it's full of fiber. And so it takes a ruminant to really digest it and you know, that is a gift to humankind, the rumen. Despite the fact that it emits methane, it has supported humans for millions of years.
Mendel Skulski 17:06
Okay, so rangelands management is applied ecology with a healthy dose of rumen.
Adam Huggins 17:14
Yes. And if you ask ranchers, they'll tell you the same.
Clayton Koopmann 17:18
I mean, there's so many different facets to these rangelands — to the habitat, to the management. Whether it's the cattle, whether it's the wildlife, whether it's the fisheries, whether it's the people and the recreation. It's really unique that everything can coexist all at the same time. And we've done you know, a lot of work to make that happen.
Mendel Skulski 17:35
Hey, who's this?
Adam Huggins 17:37
Mendel, meet Clayton.
Clayton Koopmann 17:39
My name is Clayton Koopmann. I live in the East Bay Area in California. I'm a fifth generation rancher. My family's been here since the late 1800s, and running cattle up down the central coast here.
Adam Huggins 17:51
And I'm going to stop right here and say that pretty much everything that we talked about in this series is hotly contested. In five seasons of doing Future Ecologies with you, I do not think we have covered a single topic that has been more polarized. Like I cannot tell you how many times I've been confronted with expert perspectives and with research that appears to completely contradict other perspectives and research. It's been very hard to find common ground. And claims of pro or anti cow bias are pretty constantly being thrown around.
Mendel Skulski 18:28
Well, maybe you've already blown it. You've already copped to your anti cow bias. How are we going to proceed with this controversy?
Adam Huggins 18:36
Yeah, so I'm actually going to lean into this.
Mendel Skulski 18:39
Okay?
Adam Huggins 18:40
Mendel, I pledge right now that for the rest of this episode, I will say nothing bad about cows.
Mendel Skulski 18:49
I kind of don't believe you.
Adam Huggins 18:51
Well, I'm gonna try real hard, anyway. And listeners, do not worry. We are going to get to the other side of the conversation. But today, it's 100% cowabunga.
Mendel Skulski 19:06
Okay, well, I guess I'll do what I do and just ask questions then.
Adam Huggins 19:11
Great. Okay, I'm going to begin by actually immediately breaking my pledge. But only because one thing virtually everybody does agree about is that A) cows are not native to North America.
Mendel Skulski 19:29
Sure
Adam Huggins 19:30
And B) bringing them to California has, in conjunction with other land use changes, resulted in extraordinary and potentially irreparable damage to California's native ecosystems. So long story short, pre colonial California was by all accounts, a land of tremendous ecological diversity, abundant wildlife and significant populations of Indigenous peoples.
Mendel Skulski 19:55
Not unlike everywhere else in North America.
Adam Huggins 19:59
Sure. The difference here is that there's probably nowhere else in North America where so many of the lowland ecosystems have been so thoroughly transformed. The mountainous regions of California are international conservation success stories, but the combined legacies of state-sponsored genocide against Indigenous people, damming and water diversion for agriculture, urbanization, and ranching have rendered large portions of the state almost unrecognizable from a historical standpoint. So much so that we actually don't really know what some of our rangelands ecosystems even looked like.
Mendel Skulski 20:38
Like, at all?
Adam Huggins 20:40
Not in any detail. We know we had these enormous prairies and woodlands and wetlands, all around the foot hills and valleys that were some combination of native perennial bunch grasses and wildflowers, with herds of antelope and elk wolves and grizzly bears.
Mendel Skulski 20:57
Grizzly bears.
Adam Huggins 20:58
Yeah, there is one on our state flag,
Mendel Skulski 21:00
Right, but they're not in your state.
Adam Huggins 21:04
No, they are gone, and so are the ecosystems I just described. Only scattered remnants are left.
Mendel Skulski 21:11
Replaced by what?
Adam Huggins 21:12
Well in some places, towns or cities, or farms. But throughout much of the state. These perennial bunchgrass lands have been replaced by a small suite of highly aggressive annual grasses from the Mediterranean — oats, bromes, rye, and bentgrass.
Lynn Huntsinger 21:32
California's grasslands have been basically taken over by grasses, most of which emerged in the Fertile Crescent, and they're much larger in stature. They're heavily competitive with our little native species, they grow faster, and the seed persists in the soil for many years. Even if you clear them, they are going to be back one way or another.
Mendel Skulski 21:54
And cows are to blame.
Adam Huggins 21:56
I mean, not solely. But certainly they played and may still play a pretty major role. These introduced grasses evolved with livestock in Eurasia, and are adapted to that kind of disturbance, whereas the native perennial bunchgrass communities just aren't. So the famous golden hills of California... scientific consensus is that is a consequence of annual grass invasion and dominance of those ecosystems. And it represents a pretty major historical departure from what were probably much greener and longer lived biomes. We're going to talk more about these past ecosystems in a future episode, but I think this is the background that you need right now. Because all of the rangelands people told me essentially the same thing — Those ecosystems, they are gone, probably forever. So we have to move forward with what's left. I heard this from Clayton.
Clayton Koopmann 22:54
I think it's a different ecosystem now. And I think you're gonna have to manage it that way. The annual grasses we have like the rye grass or the wild oats, they're very competitive. And they tend to just really take over and shade out the bunch grasses. So I think you'd have a hard time converting back to a purely perennial bunchgrass landscape.
Adam Huggins 23:12
And Lynn told me the same thing. That in essence, California's grasslands are now, in large part, novel ecosystems.
Lynn Huntsinger 23:21
Yes, we do have to manage for what's there. And not imagine that we're going to convert most of these grasslands back unless some new technology is developed or something amazing happens. The annual grasses are there and they don't go away.
Mendel Skulski 23:38
I'm getting the feeling this is going to be a pretty information-heavy episode. Maybe I should try to summarize the arguments coming from these rangelands, people?
Adam Huggins 23:48
By all means.
Mendel Skulski 23:49
So argument number one, these are novel ecosystems. You can't restore them. You just have to manage them. I'd guess not everyone feels that way. Adam, do you agree with that assessment?
Adam Huggins 24:07
Well, Mendel, I am with the cow people today, remember? But honestly, my personal experience has been that these novel grassland ecosystems are really stubborn. And trying to imagine restoring them at any kind of scale is challenging. Plus, restore them to what, right?
Mendel Skulski 24:26
Right. Okay then, so, game over.
Adam Huggins 24:30
No, actually, the rangelands, people say we might have lost those ecosystems and some of those species forever. But there's still tons of biodiversity in California's rangelands and we can manage for it... using cows!
Mendel Skulski 24:47
So the problem becomes the solution.
Adam Huggins 24:50
Exactly. And this is kind of a recent development, because for the longest time in California as elsewhere, the consensus view was that cattle were bad for wildlife and native biodiversity. And then slowly, a new school of thought has emerged. And that view has started to change.
Clayton Koopmann 25:09
You know, during the 90s and early 2000s, there was a ton of research done that showed the benefits of cattle grazing — the ecological benefits. And as that information was released, and the scholarly articles were released, I think you started to see a transition in the thought process of land managers and the public. And as we continue to graze, you know, and demonstrate these positive benefits, you tend to see more and more people become believers.
Adam Huggins 25:37
Lynn was one of the researchers driving this paradigm shift. And she told me that it's sometimes pretty challenging to overcome people's ingrained assumptions about livestock.
Lynn Huntsinger 25:47
Livestock is guilty until proven innocent, in every way, right. So somebody has to have done the research to prove that wildlife benefited from grazing before they're ever going to put it in their documents, right?
Adam Huggins 26:02
Specifically, any documents associated with listed species under the US Endangered Species Act. This includes the original listing documents, as well as recovery strategies and periodic reviews. These resources often portray cattle as a threat to endangered species. But when Lynn and her colleagues Sheila Barry did an analysis of over 280 endangered species in California, they found that...
Lynn Huntsinger 26:28
About half of them have been proven to benefit from livestock grazing in some circumstances.
Mendel Skulski 26:35
How so?
Adam Huggins 26:36
Well, I'd say there are two primary ways that cattle benefit endangered species in California. First, all of those introduced grasses? Cows eat them.
Mendel Skulski 26:46
Right.
Adam Huggins 26:47
Yeah, cows are like vacuum cleaners for grass. And if you don't remove those annual grasses, then they take up all of the available sunlight, all the water and nutrients. And eventually, when they dry out, their dead bodies pile up at the end of the season, and create this thick thatch layer that just covers the ground.
Clayton Koopmann 27:07
So by grazing, that also provides a benefit for a number of wildlife species. California red legged frog, California tiger salamander, kitfox, burrowing owl. Particularly like the kitfox and the burrowing owl, they prefer really short grass. It allows them an opportunity to see prey and to hunt. It also allows them to see predators coming and avoid them.
Adam Huggins 27:26
Not to mention all of the native wildflowers, which just can't compete with these introduce grasses. But can at least persist if something removes the thatch periodically.
Lynn Huntsinger 27:37
The cattle really don't like flowers. It's not just that they remove that thatch, it's also that they don't particularly like forbs.
Mendel Skulski 27:44
Uh... forbs are?
Adam Huggins 27:47
Herbaceous plants, like wildflowers. They are less preferred by cows. Clayton even says that cattle can be used to give native bunch grasses an edge against these introduced species. Which is really interesting because historically, of course, cows ate native bunch grasses into oblivion.
Clayton Koopmann 28:04
If you go out in these landscapes, and you look, there's isolated pockets and larger areas where you'll see a high concentration of perennial bunch grasses, native bunch grasses, particularly like purple needle grass. But I think what we can do with grazing is manage the bunch grasses that we have, the native grasses that we have, to get them to germinate and to reproduce and spread.
Adam Huggins 28:24
And helping native grasses means helping insects, ground nesting birds, wildflowers, and even amphibians. You name it, if it lives in grasslands in California, it probably doesn't want to be choked out by introduced grasses.
Mendel Skulski 28:40
Right, who would? And cows preferentially eat the grass. So that seems fair enough. But there's another way that they'r supposed to benefit wildlife?
Adam Huggins 28:50
Yes. And this is a bit more indirect. But essentially, in California, as in many other places, we've destroyed most of the lowland wetland habitat, and we've basically extirpated beavers.
Mendel Skulski 29:03
Right.
Adam Huggins 29:03
So the Central Valley, which is the agricultural engine of the Western United States, used to be an extraordinary complex of wetland and grassland ecosystems. It's been likened to a North American Serengeti.
Mendel Skulski 29:18
And now, mostly farms and cities.
Adam Huggins 29:21
And rangelands! So across the state, amphibians have lost most of their best habitat. But they have adapted themselves, somehow, to live in water features that have been created in upland ecosystems... to support cattle.
Lynn Huntsinger 29:38
Research has shown that the salamanders need the stockpond water. If a rancher or a park person gets rid of the introduced fish and bullfrogs, they become excellent habitat for these migratory salamanders.
Clayton Koopmann 29:52
California tiger salamander, you know, their legs are only an inch tall, so they've got a lot of country to cover, you know, to get to their breeding habitat. They used to call it estivation sites. And those salamanders, they'll stay underground most of the year. And throughout the drought, they may stay underground for two or three years and not breed. But when they do, when we get these heavy rains, and they want to come out and get to the pond to breed, you know, it's pretty tough if you had one inch tall legs to get through grass that's three feet tall. So by grazing the grasses down short, you know, around the stock ponds, it allows them an opportunity to travel a little bit easier, and get to those locations.
Lynn Huntsinger 30:25
So that turns out to be a plus. Who knew, right?
Mendel Skulski 30:34
Huh. So stock ponds have basically become substitute wetlands? Yes. Okay, argument number one, these are novel ecosystems. And then argument number two, cows can manage these novel ecosystems to make them better for the native wildlife that remains.
Adam Huggins 30:54
Yeah, I would say it's actually more like cows are the essential tool for managing these ecosystems to benefit native wildlife.
Clayton Koopmann 31:02
If you look around the state of California, the vast majority of special status, wildlife species are found on privately owned grazed range lands. And I think that's just a testament to the benefits of grazing and to the management practices of cattle producers and ranchers in the state. And I think throughout the Western United States, that that habitats there, that it's been there for several 100 years, and it's there because of their practices and the way they graze.
Mendel Skulski 31:30
Uh... what are your thoughts on that?
Adam Huggins 31:33
Well, I have read a lot of literature now. And there's a strong and growing body of evidence to support this point of view, especially in California. There are of course critiques, and we will get to those later. But I'd say that this is now the dominant view in the state of California among land managers.
Mendel Skulski 31:53
So what's next?
Adam Huggins 31:56
Well, next, of course, is fire. After the break. Okay, it is Adam. And Mendel. And this is Future Ecologies. Actually, this is part one of our series on rangelands. And today, cows can do no wrong. They manage California's novel grasslands for native biodiversity. And they also manage fuels in a state that occasionally catches fire.
Clayton Koopmann 33:00
Generally, if you look at properties that aren't grazed, you'll have a dense buildup of thatch and grassy vegetation that produces an extremely high fire risk. And when you're in an area such as the Bay Area here, these wildland interfaces are right up against neighborhoods. We've seen what happens. I mean, there's just devastating wildfire potential.
Adam Huggins 33:19
And, as we've discussed on this show many times before, climate change is exacerbating that potential.
Lynn Huntsinger 33:26
How do we take care of these lands with climate change? That's a really important consideration today for both foresters, and range managers. They understand, many of them, the value of removing that grass and finding ways to suppress it. Grazing is one of our most valuable tools for that
Adam Huggins 33:43
The annual introduce grasses that we've been talking about are the fine fuels that carry a spark from a power line, or an absent minded human, or a gender reveal party, and then generate massive wildfires in woody vegetation that would otherwise be more fire resistant.
Clayton Koopmann 34:02
I think the best thing we can do landscape wide is to continue to graze these fine fuels and grasses and keep them short. And that allows our firefighters an opportunity to suppress these fires before they can get out of hand.
Mendel Skulski 34:12
But what about prescribed burns?
Adam Huggins 34:15
Interestingly, both Lynn and Clayton are real proponents of prescribed fire. But it's just really hard to do in much of California for all sorts of reasons.
Lynn Huntsinger 34:25
Prescribed burning does too. But it's hard... harder to do, and grazing is you can do it right up to a house. They're not going to eat your house.
Mendel Skulski 34:35
Unless of course you are one of three little piggies, and you went and built your house out of straw.
Adam Huggins 34:42
That would be an unfortunate choice in California. But I mean, even in a grass house like would you rather have a cow or a prescribed burn for a neighbor?
Mendel Skulski 34:53
I see your point.
Adam Huggins 34:54
So Lynn and Clayton are saying that grazing can manage the fuel problem wherever prescribed burning simply isn't possible, for whatever reason.
Lynn Huntsinger 35:04
Yeah, we have mechanical things we have prescribed burning. Both of these are useful, both of them should be used. But we're really missing the boat if we don't also use grazing, where it's appropriate — where it works.
Clayton Koopmann 35:18
I'm a proponent of controlled burns, and I would like to see more of them on the landscape. Combination of controlled burns and grazing, I think you'd see even even greater benefits than we see now.
Mendel Skulski 35:28
I'm actually kind of surprised to hear that they're in favor of prescribed burning. Wouldn't fire effectively be like a competitor to cows in terms of consuming grass?
Adam Huggins 35:39
You would think so. But on the contrary, Lynn says that traditionally, ranchers and herders have always used fire to help clear land and keep it clear for livestock. Oh, and by preventing wildfires, Lynn says cattle can more than offset the emissions that we generally associate with them.
Lynn Huntsinger 36:00
Fires are incredibly damaging. Do you know that I think in 2020, if I remember this correctly, 400 million metric tons of carbon were released from California, which was considered a huge achievement. It was a reduction. But what they don't report is 100 million metric tons that came from those wildfires in 2020. They don't report them.
Adam Huggins 36:20
California's 2020 wildfires actually released close to 127 million metric tons of CO2. And by some estimates, that is double all of California's emission reductions since the year 2003.
Lynn Huntsinger 36:36
They don't report wildfire emissions because they're part of a natural cycle where the plants grow back. And when they grow back, they absorb the methane and carbon that's released by these fires, right? Well, consumption by livestock on rangelands is part of a natural cycle. And it grows back in one year, instead of 100. Right. The grass grows back in sequesters carbon in one year. That's the goal.
Mendel Skulski 37:01
That's an interesting argument. I mean, we've talked before about how governments don't tend to factor in wildfire emissions into their own carbon budget, which leads to kind of funky calculations about the effect of prescribed burning. But in the end, you're talking about hypothetical prevented emissions versus actual realized emissions. It just seems really hard to prove.
Adam Huggins 37:25
Yeah, the counterfactual is challenging to quantify in this case. But I think the key point here is that something needs to manage all of those fine fuels preventatively. And more often than not, livestock are the most practical tool.
Mendel Skulski 37:40
Okay, so then, argument number three is livestock... or else!
Adam Huggins 37:45
Yes, or else wildfire. Moving on, argument number four, we will spend a little less time on but suffice it to say that ranchers and rangeland managers see themselves as holding the line against more destructive forms of development and land use.
Lynn Huntsinger 38:04
We've destroyed a lot of our native ecosystems for development and farming, which really, farming converts a complex ecosystem to a very simple one, right? That's growing non native plants, that often requires water, that's completely lost most of its natural characteristics. So whereas ranching ecosystems are semi natural. And as semi natural ecosystems, they're pretty compatible with wildlife. So that's why I like ranching.
Mendel Skulski 38:32
Right... I'm familiar with this line of thought. Environmentalists might prefer tofu to beef. But putting aside climate change, a well-managed rangeland is ecologically a lot more healthy and biodiverse than a soybean monoculture
Adam Huggins 38:48
Or a housing development.
Mendel Skulski 38:50
Right. So like you said, argument number four, ranchers hold the line against more destructive development, which I can imagine is challenging in California.
Adam Huggins 39:01
Yeah, I think any rancher in California will tell you that development pressure can be pretty intense. And, you know, sometimes they can't hold out. But it's not just farms and housing developments and solar installations that want to move into these range lands. It's also... shrubs.
Mendel Skulski 39:21
Shrubs! Shrubs?
Adam Huggins 39:24
Yeah. When grasslands in the Bay Area are left without grazing or fire, woody shrubs, and eventually trees tend to move in. And if that happens, you lose all of the open habitat for endangered species. And you also create more fuel and more risk of burning down the grasslands in the woodlands.
Mendel Skulski 39:45
And the suburbs.
Adam Huggins 39:45
Those too. As far as I can tell, this is what keeps Lynn up at night.
Lynn Huntsinger 39:51
I can't tell you how urgent it is that we do something if we want to conserve our oak woodlands and our grasslands. We're losing them all over the world. But between those two kinds of forces, either intensive agriculture or abandonment and neglect, you've got a real fire problem building.
Adam Huggins 40:09
What Lynn is alluding to here is something that anyone who has ever built a campfire before will understand intuitively. Woody things don't burn as easily as grasses do. But once they do get going, they are a much more potent fuel. So shrubs and trees moving into grasslands can actually be a serious cause for concern.
Lynn Huntsinger 40:32
I'm not so worried about our private landowners. They've been doing things, many of them have been doing things for a long time. I'm worried about their economic fate, a little worried about land tenure and the future of ranching, given the costs of real estate in California. But in terms of their stewardship, I think it's pretty good. And they're interested, many of them are interested in doing really great stuff.
Adam Huggins 40:53
Instead, she's worried about the public lands where grazing is not always happening. And there is a lot of public land in California. Some of it quite remote, but much of it pressed right up against cities. And of course, in recent years, a lot of it has burned.
Mendel Skulski 41:10
So what's happening in places like those?
Adam Huggins 41:13
Well, to answer that question, let's talk a little bit more about Clayton and his operation.
Clayton Koopmann 41:20
Yeah, so my family originally homesteaded in the Dublin area in 1870s. And they moved down to Sunol, the little town where we live now. In 1918, they bought the ranch here. So we've been on this ranch for just over 100 years. I grew up here born and raised here and there's a little school down in the town of Sunol, there. And my grandfather went there, my dad went there and I went there. And I've got two little boys, they're four and two. And they're going to start going there.
Adam Huggins 41:46
I happen to be pretty familiar with that area. It's a little rural outposts with a lot of rapid urbanization all around it.
Clayton Koopmann 41:53
Yeah, we're kind of getting boxed in here. The home ranch where we live is bordered by highway 680 on the western boundary, and by highway 84 on the southern boundary.
Adam Huggins 42:03
There's housing development, there's a golf course.
Clayton Koopmann 42:06
And in the early 1960s, highway 680 actually split the ranch.
Adam Huggins 42:11
Clayton didn't realize that he wanted to continue the family business until university. And by then he was running some of his own cattle.
Clayton Koopmann 42:19
Just out of college, I went to work for MidPeninsula Regional Open Space District, and they own about 60,000 acres between Santa Clara and San Mateo County,
Adam Huggins 42:27
They manage tons of land on the San Francisco peninsula.
Clayton Koopmann 42:31
You know, they started buying land in the 60s and 70s.
Adam Huggins 42:34
Back in the day, the general consensus was the cows are bad.
Clayton Koopmann 42:38
And they kept grazing off all the properties they acquired, and tore out all the infrastructure. And you know, fast forward 20, 30 years and you start looking at the science and the benefits that well-managed cattle grazing provide to the habitat and to the landscape.
Adam Huggins 42:51
After a couple of decades of seeing what happened to the land that they removed cows from, they decided that maybe they want to bring those cows back.
Clayton Koopmann 43:00
So they hired me as a rangeland manager. And over the course of about seven or eight years, we were able to develop grazing management plans and reintroduce cattle grazing to about 12,000 acres.
Mendel Skulski 43:11
So Clayton works on public lands. And he's actually bringing grazing back to places where it had been previously removed.
Adam Huggins 43:20
Yeah and he says that once you compare grazed to ungrazed grasslands in the Bay Area, that's when you really start to see the positive impacts from grazing.
Clayton Koopmann 43:28
You know, I've seen that firsthand. One good example is we're on a piece of property that was privately owned, it was grazed, the grasses were on the shorter side. And on the other side of the fence, there was an area that was owned by an agency and I won't name them. You know, there's about three feet of dead standing grass and just dense thatch there. You looked on the side of the fence we were on that was grazed, and there's red tail hawks, there was golden eagles, there's raptors, there's a bunch of wildlife. And you look on the other side of the fence, and there was none of that.
Adam Huggins 44:00
And so after helping to return grazing to public lands all over the peninsula, he now works back across the bay, where he started.
Clayton Koopmann 44:08
So that's save me the commute. I work for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, and I manage their Alameda watershed. So there's about 40,000 acres of land here. There's two drinking water reservoirs, Calaveras reservoir and San Antonio reservoir. Of those 40,000 acresm I oversee or manage the cattle grazing on about 32,000 acres. Those properties are leased out. We have about 12 Different grazing tenents. So I oversee and manage the grazing program there. We primarily use the grazing to reduce fine fuels for wildfire protection and to enhance habitat for a number of special status wildlife species in the watershed.
Mendel Skulski 44:44
That... that's a lot of land and a lot of values to be managing for. So ranchers are already grazing on lots of public land in California.
Adam Huggins 44:57
In California and throughout the West. I mean, it's super common, but it's definitely not happening everywhere yet. And some folks are only just coming around to it. So Clayton has a bit of advice for any land managers who are looking to work with livestock operators.
Clayton Koopmann 45:15
The biggest thing for me is that your grazing operator needs to have similar objectives and ideals in mind when it comes to managing the land. They need to understand what the goals and objectives are, and it needs to be a partnership.
Adam Huggins 45:28
And a partnership means reciprocal understanding,
Clayton Koopmann 45:31
You need to work together you need to understand, you know, the agency or the landowner needs to realize that you're running a business and it needs to be economically viable. But on the other hand, you need to realize that the cattle are there to provide an ecological benefit to the landscape.
Adam Huggins 45:45
Clayton told me that it's pretty important to set up the terms of the lease so that they incentivize the kind of behaviors and management approaches that you would want to see on the land. But once the land manager's interests are aligned with the rancher's interests, there can be significant benefits. Because argument number five — that all the rangelands folks make — is that ranchers are keen and knowledgeable observers of landscapes. And that as business people, and people-people, they have incentives to manage those landscapes sustainably. I heard this from Ashley, actually, in that very first conversation. She was telling me about a rancher that she interviewed for her series.
Ashley Ahearn 46:27
You know, we're riding along and he's literally from horseback, noticing how many bites have been taken out of each bunch grass plant that we're writing by. And that wasn't something I'd associated with a cowboy, right? Like, that's something I associate with a scientist. And I was so impressed with how attuned he was to the health of his landscape and how his cows were affecting the health of that landscape. It wasn't a denial, it wasn't making lofty claims that his cows are good for the ecosystem. It was "wow, I probably need to move the herd out of this area, because there's one too many bites taken out of this bunchgrass". And I think that for me was the moment where I kind of started to see ranchers differently. And then sure enough, I come home in my own community, and I'm riding with an old cowboy, and he's doing the exact same thing. And he's noticing the exact same thing, whether it's like erosion in a riparian area, he's like, "gosh, we really got to get away from this creek, or they're gonna muddy it up, and then we're not even gonna have water here anymore".
Adam Huggins 47:20
And with Clayton, I mean, it's clear that he's a really astute observer and manager of landscapes. His own ranch has won awards for its management of conservation values. And he's a sought after manager for public lands. But he was also really clear about his personal values,
Clayton Koopmann 47:41
You know, I've got two little boys. And my goal is when I'm grazing a piece of property, I want to enhance that ecological value, I want to improve the infrastructure, I want to leave that property in much better condition than when I got there. And I want that for for my kids for the next generation. And for the generation after that, I want them to have that experience. I want them to see the wildlife. You know, we're not doing this to get rich, it's a lifestyle. It's because we love being outdoors. We love the cattle, we love the horses, and we love the wildlife. You know, you're horseback and you're riding out in the dark in the morning and watch the sun come up, and see a coyote or see a mountain lion, or take your kids out and watch a golden eagle or bald eagle fly out of the tree. It's just something that most people in this world don't get to experience, and it's something I like to share and and I don't take for granted.
Mendel Skulski 48:30
So, just to summarize, range lands are anything that isn't paved, or forested, or wet.
Adam Huggins 48:37
Yes, according to the rangelands people. I will say some wetlands people consider to be rangelands, but let's just go right past that.
Mendel Skulski 48:46
And rangelands proponents will argue that they are, in California at least, novel ecosystems that can't otherwise be restored, but can be managed for native biodiversity using cows. Those cows can also be used to control fuels and prevent wildfires. And that ranching as a practice defends those ecosystems against other harmful forms of development, and promotes a kind of long term stewardship by people who really know and care for the land.
Adam Huggins 49:19
You nailed it. Oh, and one more thing. Probably the most obvious thing actually. Rangelands generate useful products that most of us enjoy. Sometimes daily, sometimes with a bit of wine.
Lynn Huntsinger 49:34
How do you optimally produce goods for human consumption like meat products, leather, mushrooms, charcoal, wildlife, and now endangered species? How do you do that sustainably for a couple of 1000 years?
Adam Huggins 49:50
The question Lynn is asking is one that ranchers like Clayton have a ready answer for.
Clayton Koopmann 49:55
There's farmland that's easily accessible with equipment, and people farm that. But there's all these landscapes that you can't farm, and what we're doing by grazing, aside from the ecological benefits, we provide a protein source for the general public consumption on land that's of no value for food production otherwise. So I think there's a win win there.
Mendel Skulski 50:15
Well, Adam, I am impressed. You kept your word. You really managed to go the whole episode without saying anything negative about cows. Other than... other than all that stuff at the top.
Adam Huggins 50:30
Yeah. Speaking personally, I will say that, you know, working on these episodes, talking to these folks, and reading a mountain of literature on the subject, it's really complicated the issue for me. I think Lynn is doing some really important science, and I really respect the work that Clayton is doing out on the land. I still might not like cows, but I'm starting to appreciate their value.
Mendel Skulski 50:55
You are capable of growth.
Adam Huggins 50:57
Hurray!
Mendel Skulski 50:58
Would you say that all of these conversations have... cattle-ized a shift in your thinking?
Adam Huggins 51:08
Yes, and no. Because I have to say that there are lots of folks who have a serious beef with this approach to managing public lands.
Laura Cunningham 51:20
People say "oh, it's a changed California annual grassland. Now it's permanent. You know, all you can do is use cattle to graze it". I think that's wrong.
Adam Huggins 51:31
And we're going to dig into all of that in this series. But not before we answer the one question you've probably been asking yourself this entire episode. You know, "Hey, Adam, what about the butterflies?"
Mendel Skulski 51:47
Wait, what?
Adam Huggins 51:49
That's next time, on Part Two of Home on the Rangelands.
Mendel Skulski 52:02
This episode of Future Ecologies features the voices of Ashley Ahearn, Dr. Lynn Huntsinger, and Clayton Koopman, music by Thumbug, Aerialists, Saltwater Hank, C. Diab, and Sunfish Moon Light, Cover art by Ale Silva, and was produced by Adam Huggins, and me, Mendel Skulski. Special thanks to Tristan Brenner, Dr. James Bartolom, Camilo Andrés Garzón Castaño, Brennen King, and Robert Alder. And thanks most of all to all of our patrons, without whom this show would not be possible. To keep it going, and get access to bonus episodes, early releases, our discord server, and more, head to futureecologies.net/join Until next time, adios.