Can cows be used to restore deserts instead of degrading them?

One huge problem we have around the world today is unmanaged grazing animals that are causing land degradation! In many places in the world cow’s aren’t actually native and this can be part of the problem, native herd animals have apex preditors to keep them under control, by moving them around and this helps the environment too, giving the land a chance to rest and recover! The grazing animals can be beneficial too, by pruning plants to stimulate regrowth, and fertilizing the earth as well as helping to break up the soil to allow moisture to slowly seep into it. When grazing animals are unmanaged and there are little to no apex preditors to move them around, they spend longer in an area, over grazing the plants and over trampling which compacts the soil, hardens it so rain cannot easily soak into the earth but instead cause erosion.

Human’s insatiable appetite for meat and diary products isn’t going away so it’s essential that cattle ranchers and diary farmers become more responsible in managing grazing animals. This project we visited in The Sonoran desert is showing how cattle can actually bee used to regenerate deserts, and it’s a perfect example of how to cattle ranch properly. To learn more you can watch the video below…