Reversing global warming with livestock?: Seth Itzkan at TEDxSomerville

it is my pleasure to tell you about a remarkable innovation to restore grasslands and reverse climate change this innovation however requires an unlikely ally in one of the world's most vilified creatures cab now raise your hands hands if you are suspicious the cattle can be an ally in reversing global warming well you feel that way of course because cattle have a history of being an ecological wrecking ball but as you will see they can also be restorative and this is because of a new form of livestock management that simulates the behavior of wild herbs including bison and wildebeests that the grasslands of the world co-evolved with now to find out more about this innovation I recently spent six weeks in the Africa Center for holistic management in Zimbabwe in southern Africa what I found there expanded my thinking about what's possible for restoration here are two sets of pictures taken on the same day on neighboring properties which property do you think has four times the cattle density is the other four times well conventional thinking would say the degraded property but in fact it's the healthy property how is that possible here's a picture from Zimbabwe but it's indicative of desert if ocation the world over including the United States the typical explanation is too many animals over grazing but there hasn't been grazing here for decades and the great herds that used to run through here have long been decimated so is this the result of too many animals or perhaps too few in 2002 they began restoring this land with livestock watch the transformation this is 2002 2005 2006 2007 let's watch this again quickly before a livestock after what's a little bit of River restoration example this is an aerial view of the DIMM Bom Bom Bay River at the ranch in Zimbabwe the blue star represents the historic high-water mark for that River in the dry season and elephants would bathe there after several years of treating the land with their modified livestock practice new surface water is available now in the dry season 1.5 kilometers upstream from where it has ever been because of this there's new watering holes for cattle and they no longer need to run the pumps in the dry season here's how it looks on the ground I took these pictures we're driving north upstream with the river on the left here's the new year round pools throughout the dry season 1.5 kilometers upstream and here's cattle watering they no longer need the pumps there this is a reversal of desertification how is it possible and what is the relationship with global warming let's step back for a second and talk about grasslands grasslands are the largest terrestrial ecosystem on the planet and they love carbon in fact there's as much carbon in grasslands as there is in the atmosphere so they're vital to climate stability they store the carbon in the soil through their root systems which can be 15 feet deep the more carbon in the soil the greater the capacity to hold water the more it holds water the quicker it replenishes the water table the higher the water table the more the surface water and the longer into the dry season that you get the surface water now often overlooked in grassland health is the role of hurting raisers these animals eat plants the way nature intended they biologically recycle the nutrients and they aerate the soil in fact they are essential to the carbon water cycle that you saw in the previous slide they co-evolved with the grasslands and in the presence of predation such as lions and wolves they run in packs and are continuously moving and there is no over grazing and that brings us to our next takeaway point over grazing is a human invention and seeing as we invented it we can solve it in the natural grassland ecosystem animals plants and soil are in balance in pre European North America 35 to 75 million Buffalo contributed approximately a billion pounds of fertilizer a day 35 million pronghorn and 4 billion prairie dogs provided similar ecological services together with the Predators the wolves and coyotes it was an animal planet continent and the animals made the prairies the fertile grounds that it was now how do you feel when you see this picture this is a mountain of Buffalo skulls 3 stories high football field deep how do you feel this is Buffalo genocide and I would like you to consider that this represents the end not just of Buffalo and prairie animals but of the soil itself and the beginning of desertification because soil needs animals a few decades later we get this the dust balls is there a correlation recognizing the essential role that animals play in grassland ecosystem a new practice called holistic management is using livestock as a proxy for the wild herds some of the specifics of this management practice include running livestock in dense packed and continuously moving the way natural herds would behave in the presence of predation and mobile Corral's every seven to ten days they move the corral in order to maximize the land covered with dung and litter and of course a grazing plan this prevents over grazing and as they'd like to say it's the cattle to the right place at the right time for the right reason a final example from Sonora Mexico before after which do you prefer the takeaway changing livestock management can restore grasslands and we need to restore grasslands to reverse global warming the final takeaway that I'm most encouraged by is that this presents a new face of climate Heroes people who are actually making a difference putting the carbon in the ground village herders doing what they've always done although now doing it in a way that is restorative and that offers hope for the future thank you [Applause] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 26,740

Rating: 4.8468084 out of 5

Keywords: Climate Change, Global Warming, Education, USA, ted talk, tedx talks, ted, tedx, Sustainability, ted talks, ted x, TEDxSomerville, tedx talk, English

Id: lOpoRdpvlh0

Length: 7min 54sec (474 seconds)

Published: Thu May 24 2012