REWILDING BRITAIN - Grazing Ecology of English Longhorn Cattle

hey what's up how's it going it's rob and welcome to leave curious so in the past we have briefly touched on the importance of grazing ecology and rewiring what it can do for rewilding and in today's video i want to get into a little bit more about exactly what grazing ecology is and specifically i want to get into the mighty hurt before the english longhorn cattle and tell you exactly what they're currently doing and what they will be doing in the future to make britain a wild place [Music] grazing ecology is the theory of how large herbivores interact with vegetation through both grazing and disturbance grazing ecology is directly linked with increasing biodiversity all right let's just say that hypothetically you've just purchased farm i mean i mean you might have just purchased a farm i don't know if you have congratulations but let's just say you've just purchased a farm and what you've got in a minute is grasslands previously intensively grazed grasslands if you did absolutely nothing to it that grassland would begin to develop into scrub with areas of successive vegetation you'd find species like black form that are light-loving sprawling thorny shrubs and then tree species will begin to grow species like oak hornbeam or potentially even ash interestingly the bird species the j will look to these developing areas of blackthorne and go in there and they'll stash the acorns which they'll then subsequently come and eat in the winter or whenever they get hungry but of course some of those acorns will develop into trees and surrounded by thorns the saplings are able to develop without being eaten by grazing animals but in the context of this example there are no grazing animals so these trees they will grow and they will not growing very tall until they become the dominant species that form a closed canopy and there won't be much that can grow beneath it this is actually really poor habitat for wildlife but say if like within a more natural system grazing animals were present the physical disturbance from large herbivores prevents this succession towards a closed canopy forest and yes some trees are able to develop particularly those protected by the thorny bushes so when you have a number of different grazing animals which are all doing different things some are snapping the grass off with their tongues others are completely turning over the earth altogether when this happens an area of land will form into a rich mosaic a different plant life that will not only be biodiverse but also structurally diverse and this rich habitat is sustained by all aspects of the herbivore's life from grazing and disturbance to the transfer of nutrients and seed dispersal so historic landscapes uncultivated landscapes uninhabited landscapes by men would have looked much like the landscapes which we've described and that's because of grazing ecology and it's also because of predator prey interactions and i mean it's like the complete opposite of what you see behind me here so grazing ecology is the battle between vegetative succession and animal disturbance so we mentioned that different herbivores play different roles and today we're learning about the awesome english longhorn cattle so for thousands of years our natural systems would have been graced by the now extinct orok now the oracle is a big animal and in many ways it's actually very similar to the english longhorned cattle not only in behavior but also in how they interact with the landscape historically they were prized by farmers for their ease of carving docile nature and butterfat content of their milk but they soon fell short to other breeds of cattle who produce better dairy and those who grew faster for meat production however in recent times they've been selected as a great breed for rewilding their most distinctive feature has to be their long curly horns protruding from the sides of their heads they have a light patch on their coat which follows their spine and underbelly they're big creatures with males weighing up to a thousand kilograms and standing up to 1.5 meters tall and when they lift their heads and stick up their long hungry tongues they can reach branches 2.5 metres from the ground they are very resilient and are able to survive all year outside as they graze both grass during the warmer months and they also browse on the vegetation of trees during the colder months they use their tongues to wrap around flowers and grasses to rip them from the ground longhorns are largely non-selective grazers meaning they will not favor one plant species over another so you avoid a single species becoming dominant in grasslands they use their horns to snap branches and twigs from trees which they eat the leaves of this is just like coppicing or pruning the branches of certain trees which ensures structural diversity there are also tremendous dispersers of seed and nutrient given their very dire and sheer size depositing seeds through dung hooves and their fur coats so all of these positive effects of the english longhorn cattle have been seen at the nep castle estate grazing ecology has been fundamental to the rewiring successes at nap nepal the longhorn cattle and all of their herbivores to be truly free-roaming there is very little if any intervention from humans the animals are allowed to establish a natural herd structure and they act as one too also at nep and most likely other farms they also sell free-range wild meat that comes directly from the longhorn cattle you can get a number of different beef products and when you think about the quality of lives that these animals are having coupled with the environmental and the ecological benefits of rearing these animals in this way you just can't help but think that more meat should be produced in this country in this way and also you have to remember that the uk is lacking natural predators so there must be a way of regulating these herbivores within enclosed areas i still feel like there's a question that needs answering and that question is is like how will these animals interact with people at scale look yes i know you can go through a walk through a field and encounter some cattle actually in recent years i've seen some longhorn cattle and you know i kept my distance i respected them and nothing really came of it but you know i'm asking the question i'm thinking forward here to like a wilder britain where like these animals are near enough everywhere like what would happen what are going to be the implications how would you feel let me know your thoughts on the english longhorn castle let me know what you think about grazing ecology i love chatting with you guys down in the comments i really do appreciate your feedback but in the meantime thank you so much for watching leave curious you

Channel: Leave Curious

Views: 12,787

Keywords: rewilding britain, rewilding, british longhorn cattle, rewild, english long horn cattle, grazing ecology

Id: psw0zFdOr9w

Length: 6min 37sec (397 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021