<dh@.> wrote in message news
> On Sat, 6 May 2006 14:18:01 +0100, "pearl" > wrote:
>
> >"Ms Libertarian" > wrote in message . 97.142...
> >> dh@. wrote :
> >
> >> > From a grass raised dairy cow
> >> > people get thousands of dairy servings.
> >>
> >> Yeah, AND meat. What could be more environmentally friendly.
> >> Input grass and get meat and dairy products!
> >
> >'.. Livestock are directly or indirectly responsible for much of
> >the soil erosion in the United States, the ecologist determined.
> >On lands where feed grain is produced
>
> It didn't take you long to change the subject. Where grain is produced
> for cattle, and for you, it's harder on the environment than the grass raised
> animal products we're discussing:
'.. Livestock are directly or indirectly responsible for much of
the soil erosion in the United States, the ecologist determined.
On lands where feed grain is produced, soil loss averages
13 tons per hectare per year. Pasture lands are eroding at a
slower pace, at an average of 6 tons per hectare per year. But
erosion may exceed 100 tons on severely overgrazed pastures,
and 54 percent of U.S. pasture land is being overgrazed. '
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases...stock.hrs.html
'Livestock grazing has damaged approximately 80% of
stream and riparian ecosystems in the western United States.
Although these areas compose only 0.5-1.0% of the overall
landscape, a disproportionately large percentage (70-80%)
of all desert, shrub, and grassland plants and animals depend
on them. The introduction of livestock into these areas
100-200 years ago caused a disturbance with many ripple
effects. Livestock seek out water, succulent forage, and
shade in riparian areas, leading to trampling and overgrazing
of streambanks, soil erosion, loss of streambank stability,
declining water quality, and drier, hotter conditions. These
changes have reduced habitat for riparian plant species,
cold-water fish, and wildlife, thereby causing many native
species to decline in number or go locally extinct. Such
modifications can lead to large-scale changes in adjacent
and downstream ecosystems.
... recent studies clearly document that livestock continue
to degrade western streams and rivers, and that riparian
recovery is contingent upon total rest from grazing.
...'
http://www.onda.org/library/papers/BelskyGrazing.pdf
'The planet's mantle of trees has already declined by a third
relative to preagricultural times, and much of that remaining
is damaged or deteriorating. Historically, the demand for
grazing land is a major cause of worldwide clearing of forest
of most types. Currently, livestock production, fuel wood
gathering, lumbering, and clearing for crops are denuding a
conservatively estimated 40 million acres of the Earth's
forestland each year.
.. Worldwide, grasses of more than 10,000 species once
covered more than 1/4 of the land. They supported the
world's greatest masses of large animals. Of the major
ecotypes, grassland produces the deepest, most fertile
topsoil and has the most resistance to soil erosion.
Livestock production has damaged the Earth's grassland
more than has any other land use, and has transformed
roughly half of it to desertlike condition. Lester Brown
of the Worldwatch Institute reports that "Widespread
grassland degradation [from livestock grazing] can now
be seen on every continent."
In 1977, experts attending the United Nations Conference
on Desertification in Nairobi agreed that the greatest cause
of world desertification in modern times has been livestock
grazing (as did the US Council on Environmental Quality in
1981). They reported that grazing was desertifying most arid,
semi-arid, and sub-humid land where farming was not occurring.
[ '..while about 10% (3.7 billion acres) of the Earth's terrestrial
surface is cropland, nearly half of this land is used to grow
food for livestock. ' ]
Seven years later UNEP compiled, from questionnaires sent to
91 countries, the most complete data on world desertification
ever assembled. According to the resultant 1984 assessment,
more than 11 billion acres, or 35% of the Earth's land surface,
are threatened by new or continued desertification. UNEP
estimated that more than 3/4 of this land -- the vast majority
of it grazed rangeland -- had already been at least moderately
degraded. About 15 million acres (the size of West Virginia)
of semi-arid or subhumid land annually are reduced to
unreclaimable desert-like condition, while another 52 million
and acres annually are reduced to minimal cover or to
sweeping sands -- more due to livestock grazing than any
other influence. The world's "deserts" are expected to expand
about 20% in the next 20 years.
.......'
http://www.wasteofthewest.com/Chapter6.html
'The Forest Service defines range as "land that provides or is capable
of providing forage for grazing or browsing animals [read: 'livestock']."
By this definition more than 80% of the West qualifies as range,
including a complex array of more than 40 major ecosystem types,
all of which have been significantly degraded by ranching. ..
...
Numerous historical accounts do confirm drastic, detrimental changes
in plant and animal life, soil, water, and fire conditions throughout most
of the West. These reports progressively establish livestock grazing as
the biggest single perpetrator of these changes, particularly considering
that it was the only significant land use over most of the West.
One of the most useful and informative descriptions of the early West
was that of Meriweather Lewis and William Clark on their famous
expedition across the northern Midwest, Rockies, and Pacific
Northwest from 1804 to 1806 (Thwaites 1959). Their descriptions of
the unconquered West are of a world we can scarcely imagine:
landscapes filled with wildlife; great diversities of lush vegetation; highly
productive, free-flowing rivers, creeks, and springs; abundant, dark,
fertile soil; unaltered, unimpeded fire and other natural processes. Of
the Montana plains, one excerpt from Clark reads, "we observe in
every direction Buffalow, Elk Antelopes & Mule Deer inumerable and
so jintle that we could approach them near with great ease." Another
states, We saw a great number of buffaloe, Elk, common and Black
tailed deer, goats [pronghorn] beaver and wolves. ..
In the West today only ungrazed Yellowstone National Park supports
nearly this variety and density of large wild animals. ..
Lewis and Clark's and other historic journals attest that buffalo, elk,
deer, bighorns, pronghorn, mountain goats, moose, horses, grizzly
and black bears, wolves, foxes, cougars, bobcats, beaver, muskrats,
river otters, fish, porcupines, wild turkeys and other "game" birds,
waterfowl, snakes, prairie dogs and other rodents, most insects, and
the vast majority of wild animals were all many times more abundant
then than now. So too were native plants; the journals describe a
great abundance and diversity of grasses and herbaceous vegetation,
willows and deciduous trees, cattails, rushes, sedges, wild grapes,
chokecherries, currants, wild cherries and plums, gooseberries,
"red" and "yellow" berries, service berries, flax, dock, wild garlic and
onions, sunflowers, wild roses, tansy, honeysuckle, mints, and more,
a large number being edible. Most of these plants have been depleted
through the many effects of livestock grazing for 100 years and are
today comparatively scarce.
...
http://www.wasteofthewest.com/Chapter3.html
'Animal Enemies
[i]n the eyes of graziers, basically there are 3 requirements for
an acceptable environment -- grass, water, and livestock to
eat and drink them. All else is questionable, if not expendable,
a possible hindrance to profit and power.
The ranching establishment's assault on the environment,
therefore, includes campaigns against a huge number and
wide variety of animals. Most of the score or so native large
mammal species in the West have been decimated by ranching,
both intentionally through slaughtering efforts and indirectly
through the harmful effects of livestock grazing and ranching
developments. Indeed, most larger and a great many smaller
animal species are in some way assailed as enemies. The
mass carnage carried out for the sake of privately owned
livestock continues today throughout the grazed 70% of the
West, including public lands, and even in adjacent ungrazed
areas.
Though definitions given by ranching advocates vary, most
animal enemies fall into 4 main subdivisions: Carnivores and
omnivores are (1) predators if able to kill a sheep, calf, or
goat. Herbivores are (2) competitors if they eat enough forage
or browse to decrease the amount available to livestock.
Many smaller animal species are (3) pests if they occur in
large enough numbers to affect production in some manner.
And a huge number of animals are considered (4) no- goods,
inherently "no good" because they are perceived as possessing
some offensive characteristic.'
http://www.wasteofthewest.com/chapter4/page7.html
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