www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/15/bison-romania-tarcu-2m-cars-carbon-dioxide-emissions-aoe
Herd of 170 bison could help store CO2 equivalent of almost 2m cars, researchers say
I thought that ruminant species emitted a lot of the carbon they ate as methane, which is worse for the climate than CO2.
I also don't see any links to relevant scientific articles - I would love to know how they arrived at that number.
Wild roaming bison and ranch cattle are vastly different. Farmed bison may be similar to ranch cattle because they're less mobile.
I think the science is based on bison being a major driver in soil and ecosystem health like other large animals are (elephants for example). They trample underbrush, turn over soil with their hooves, and allow ecosystems to naturally cycle because they don't over graze. Look at England's reintroduction of European Bison as an example.
I'm not exactly sure how that leads to 2M worth of car CO2 to be dissipated, but I'm not a scientist.
Because the restored plants trap more carbon
Farmed bison may be similar to ranch cattle because they're less mobile.
Did you actually mean ranch cattle there? Ranch cattle are often highly mobile, ours range over many miles.
There are sometimes short periods in the life of ranch cattle (depending on their use) - usually the start and end - where they are confined to smaller areas, but 90% of their life is usually roaming at least some kind of range.
Everyone reads the headlines that cattle kill the planet and don’t look into much past that. Industrial feedloting and dairies are the issue but cow calf and backgrounder operations and folks finishing on their own place aren’t the culprits.
People just don’t know the differences. With proper management cattle could be a driving force for carbon sequestration. There used to be upwards of 60 million bison, not counting elk, moose, and antelope populations, roaming.
Property rights aren’t going anywhere so neither are the fences. Which means cattle, who are so genetically similar to bison they can interbreed, can serve the same ecosystem role if managed correctly like with rotational grazing, only using up cycled feed inputs like the waste from ethanol production, and mandating that beef should be sourced within x miles of point of sale and not imported from some Brazilian who cut down the rain forest to pasture their cattle.
Wild bison have far greater area to roam than any ranched animal, but I see your point, they may effectively do the same amount of movement. I guess I meant more pasture raised, rather than ranch. I'm not a farmer/rancher.
Suspect the reference was more akin to cattle in feed lots and dairy cows.
Best sample of this is the Buffalo scenes in "Dances with wolves"
I do know that the Netherlands found different seaweed (iirc) based food reduced cattle farts quite a bit. The diet affects how much methane they fart out which mat make a difference
I think Allan Savory has a lot to say about this too. He has a controversial theory about large livestock herds creating more productive grasslands through promoting plant growth by eating up older leaves and grasses.
This isn't so much about them storing the carbon, but in the way they terraform the land. This is one reason they are wanting to release Mammoths in Siberia, or Canada, the way their presence changes an area is helpful to the planet.
Ken Burns' buffalo documentary goes into the ecosystem function of huge buffalo herds and what happened to the Midwest and Canadian plains after those herds were almost wiped out.
Not to be nit picky but methane is worse in the short term but breaks down 10 times faster than CO2. Meaning if we stopped all greenhouse emissions we'd see a "reversal" from the effects of methane within 30 years, but 300-1000 years for CO2.
I know that.
In the way the UN calculates the warming, it is calculated for a period of 100 years. Methane breaks down in 25-30, so it only counts for those years - but it still has 25 times the impact that the same mass of CO2 has over the full 100 years. 25 times the impact in a quarter the time means that methane is actually close to 100 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 while it is there.
The reason for only counting things for a max of 100 years, and not however long it takes to break down, is because technology is expected to be good enough that we can reverse most of the emissions after that point.
Yup, if you ignore 90% of the effects of one, the other will definitely seem worse. What meaningful progress has been made in the last 30 years in technology to give any weight to that statement?
What makes you think, again given the alarming rate of climate change over the past 30 years and our refusal to do pretty much anything, that we'll get it together in the next 100 years?
Okay, don't ignore the rest of the period. If you don't, methane is still 2½ times more potent.
Another thing is that when methane is broken down, it is broken down into CO2 and water. It's just extra heating from the methane compared to if the carbs were fully decomposed to water and CO2 from the start.
According to this study, buffalo emit methane too
It is concluded that the ruminal methane yield in cattle and buffaloes fed on the same diet did not differ
I mean bison in the wild aren't fed the same diet as cattle so it could be possible that wild bison do produce less mehtane.
So free range Cattle are just fine now then?
In my country, the farmers put down a specific grass which is very rich and fattening for cattle (and sheep, etc). In large countries like the US, that may not be a factor. But if we had wild cattle here, that grass would be their main diet and it would probably be almost as bad.
Always have been
Ya, that’s what I think. I just get everyone saying they’re just as bad as feedlot cattle.
I await the results of your study :)
The whole methane/carbon debate over animal farming is a big waste of time. It's going to be carbon neutral at the end of the day. The amount of carbon we get from animals is equal to whatever they consumed. They don't "net" add carbon to the atmosphere.
If we want to sequester carbon we should build out of wood. Carbon stored in wood is not in the atmosphere.
They don't "net" add carbon to the atmosphere.
Not by mass but pound-for-pound the methane they turn some of that carbon into is 80 times as effective greenhouse gas as CO2.
In addition, (or as part of that math?) methane doesn't get trapped by photosynthesis like CO2 does, the methane molecules in the atmosphere need to burn into CO2 before they "disappear" and that takes ~8 years on average, whereas plain CO2 is ready for photosynthesis from the get-go. But I'm not a scientist idk
It's a short-term effect.
And if we could find a way to harvest it we could use it as sustainable source of natural gas. One day our natural gas reserves will run out and it is the number 1 way we heat our homes. If we could produce natural gas just by feeding animals grass we'd have an unlimited source of it without having to create new infrastructure or polluting the environment.
Short term and cyclical. There’s some set load of methane per cow and there isn’t some infinite feedback loop of cow populations so it’s fixed by carrying capacity. Digging up hydrocarbons and releasing them into the air is the issue not some fixed methane cycle.
To your point about harvesting it, I’ve seen examples of dairies putting a bladder over their runoff catch and using the methane produced there to power the farm itself and half the town it is located near. I believe that was in California.
I had the same thought. I've been reading for years now that cattle farming is bad for the environment because of the methane it releases and don't see how buffalo are any different.
The difference is a herd of cattle sit in a single patch of overgrazed, barren land while constantly pouring out methane.
Buffalo meanwhile, are constantly on the move as they forage, their grazing habits result in soil being turned and their dung becomes fertilizer, which causes the plants to regrow and thrive once the buffalo move on, and these same plants have more potential to trap carbon from the atmosphere thanks to being healthier and more abundant because of the buffalo’s foraging.
170 bisons is nothing in terms of methane production compared to the hundreds of thousands billions of cows we consume.
But 170 bisons freely walking in the wild are powerful enough to make a difference in getting the soil fertilized.
Hundreds of thousands? Try BILLIONS.
The global cow population is actually higher than the human population.
Good point. It's hard to imagine these numbers.
An organism's energy in a functioning ecosystem generally goes back into it. You're at the very least locking the carbon equivalent of 170 bison into the system (with potential to grow) and an order of magnitude more once you realise all the ecosystem services the bison provide to maintain a healthy grassland, encouraging the growth of new plants, therefore more diverse plants, therefore attracting more plants that take advantage of the new nutrient resources provided by the previous ones, etc. More plants, even more carbon locked in. Not to mention every other animal that also benefits from this.
This is what I came to say. I've heard nothing about herds other than their methane farts messing up the world.
The exact paper is linked within the article
If people loved eating Bison then the science would tell us that Bison are bad for the planet
That doesn't make any sense. People do like eating bison.
“Bison influence grassland and forest ecosystems by grazing grasslands evenly, recycling nutrients to fertilise the soil and all of its life, dispersing seeds to enrich the ecosystem, and compacting the soil to prevent stored carbon from being released."
Worth noting that the study has not been peer reviewed. But it's an interesting idea.
Compacting the soil so stored carbon can’t be released? What a load of shit. What do they think happens when it rains and the soil is loosened up? Or when plants and grass grow up through the soil?
Last time I drove through Wind Cave national park the ground wasn’t one big sheet of concrete
I have said this many time to only getting ripped to shreds by the Anti-cattle/meat/vegan group. I would think free ranging cattle would be pretty much the same thing. We have so much land in the middle of the states where these animals could roam and still be used for food.
Interesting that here in the west, they are always saying that they need to cull the wild horses because the trample the plants and eat too many of them
Perhaps due to them being different animals with different feet and grazing patterns. Horses were absent from the Americas for 10,000 years, maybe the ecosystem developed in a way that would be harmed by them. Could be that they breed out of control and eat too much without large predators to keep them in check. In Australia we never had hooved animals so they really wreck stuff
The main problem I think is that horses are both too numerous and not suited to the usually very dry environment (remember horses are descendants of the temperate forest-steppe dwelling Tarpan). Another thing is that due to the lack of large predators that can meaningfully make a sort of ‘landscape of fear’ it allows horses and other herbivores to overgraze, cougars are the only one that can has a chance at hunting horses, we need wolves, grizzlies and (eventually) jaguars!
Peer reviews just means reviewed by the people that agree with you and a couple that don’t to make it look more legit. It’s a common issue in the mainstream science world.
This is exactly what us natives have been saying though for a while. Its almost like we know the land better than the non-native scientists.
bet it's not what you think though..
Yellowstone bison punches a hole right through tourists' car
https://www.advnture.com/news/bison-punches-hole-car
Bison Stampede Smashes Car Window
I'd pay to see 170 bison destroy 2m cars
I feel your skepticism here is more about a bison bias than their ecological role lol
the benefits of Megafauna rewilding going more mainstream is very nice to see
??? what , i’m sorry they don’t explain the science at all that seems like quite an outrageous claim to make
Building bike only bike lanes could also save co2, get bikes out of the street and cars out of the bike lanes. Let’s build a bike grid and get cycling!
Yes, but I think we can handle both
We did that in my city. I rarely see bikers in the new bike lanes, and that’s after spending more time in traffic because the bike lane replaced the bus lane.
We recently built two bikehighways in my city and they are PACKED all the time. It’s incredible! But they don’t connect, so it’s hard to use them as conduits. We mostly use them as destinations. If they connect as a grid. It will make a big difference. As it is, cycling has more than doubled in the city since Covid and it’s largely because of these bike highways and other infrastructure.
Well then, why not use the bike lane yourself? It is empty anyway!
The bike lane doesn’t go to my work, and it’s about a 15mile ride each way
Then you didn't build proper bike lanes in your city and you are surprised why the skeleton grid that doesn't let people bike to their destinations is not used?
I hear this from people who don't bike all the time - "look at all these brand new bike lanes that are empty all the time!!!". But the "bike lane" is just a painted line forcing cyclist to squeeze between parked cars and fast moving cars. Or the bike lane just casually ends 10 meters before a huge intersection throwing you into a dodgeball game where your life is the stake. Or designated bike road has 5 separate light signals to get across the intersection making you waste 5-8 minutes just waiting for the lights to change.
If bike infrastructure is done properly, tons of people will use it. It has to be safe (no cars around), it has to allow you to bike causally (no pointless sharp curves, no low priority lights on intersections, plenty of space), but most importantly it has to go to places. A bike road that is not connected to other bike roads, is pointless.
Anyway, empty bike infrastructure is a good thing. Bikes are not cars. People on bikes don't create endless traffic jams because they take much less space and don't require so elaborate traffic control that requires them to stop every few minutes because otherwise they'd kill people
I ride 22 km one way on a daily basis on my bike (I’m Dutch) so that’s not really a problem. Roads not reaching your workplace sound like a valid concern.. 😂
Also, brutal winters so I can really only ride half the year
Because in the game of vehicular chicken, bikers are at the very bottom. Maybe it is different it cities where the practice is more widespread, but I wouldn't feel safe that someone in a vehicle wouldn't side swipe me accidentally because they didn't see me.
That really isn't an issue when you have separate bike lanes.
Ah, with like a curb in between? My city definitely doesn't have that. It just turned the right-most lane into a bike lane, essentially.
Yep, exactly.
I'm Danish, and biking is very common here. We have a lot of bike lanes in most larger cities, and I've seen videos on YouTube by people visiting our country being surprised by the number of bikes there are.
Wikipedia even has a page called Cycling in Denmark.
My city is building a bunch of bike lanes. I only use them for a few blocks around the area I'm going to or coming from because I prefer going a few blocks over and biking down mostly empty residential streets with little traffic.
Even if it's only for 10% or less of my ride, it makes my ride possible by letting me access those high traffic areas.
One day when there's enough driver awareness of cyclists I might do more of my riding on busy roads with bike lanes.
US cities are too spread out, biking is impossible outside of very specific small niches that are usually the nonsensically expensive places
That’s a lovely myth you’ve got there, spread by car companies like GM who bought up and destroyed the cable car companies all over the country. Bigger countries than ours have more rail service. Between trains and bike highways there is so much more possible than being a slave to your car and paving more and more highways.
And do what? Ride a bike in global warming? No thank you
Driving cars for everyone is unsustainable so… yes.
"Faster method for removing 2m cars worth of emissions discovered"
In a surprise discovery, scientists recently found that removing 2m cars from service removed 2m cars worth of emissions.
These results have not yet been peer reviewed.
Great news. Less Co2 and more meat for us normal people to eat.
That is actually very interesting.
Release the bison!
TONIGHT, WE RIDE!
2 mill cars over their entire lifetime
How many miles have these cars done?
Very cool, I wonder what type of game management they’ll have to do if there isn’t any predators?
Buffalo Commons, Let’s Go!
Regardless we need more buffaloes
buffalooooooooo
GO BILLS
Keystone species idea. But if they can't roam they are not that effective.
Just ride Bisons instead of cars. Problem solved
Glad we invented Bisons who photosynthesis now.
(X) Doubt
If elephants survive the African sun (with mud and dust on their backs), couldn't they thrive in the US? Imagine breeding a couple of thousand elephants to roam and eat thick brush that has ruined grassland in many places in the US, either pushed out by tumbleweed or other rubbish.
Too bad we killed them all
Sounds like a load of bull. 🤣
That’s awesome news! Turns out we have <checks clipboard> um, 6 of those left.
Too bad we decided to wipe them out for funsies. God I hate people sometimes.
Yeah this is obviously a hyperbole, no way that only 170 would have that much impact. Likely that’s the overall impact they’d have over their entire life.
Uplifting? More like dystopic. "Save 170 bison so we can make 2m more cars". A living species kept around as nothing more than a carbon sink.
While I fully agree with you that life has an inherent value that cannot be measured by human standards, this article goes to show that with a bit of rewilding a real impact can be made which benefits entire ecosystems.
My take away wasn't that this would enable corporations to carbon credit their destructions away but I see why this is a depressing viewpoint.
Would you rather they go extinct and their ecosystem collapse? Lol what a weird take.
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