By Jessica Scott-Reid
Jessica is a Canadian writer, animal advocate and plant-based food expert. Her work appears regularly in media across Canada and the US.
Regenerative agriculture, in particular regenerative grazing—meaning the use of cows—has been positioned as the new silver bullet for saving natural spaces ravaged by agriculture. Through their ability to graze on grasslands, poop, and draw carbon into the soil, proponents of regenerative (aka holistic) grazing believe that the once villainized cow is actually the key to rejuvenating ecosystems, restoring biodiversity, and saving the soil—of course all while continuing to provide profit for farmers and beef for people. In fact, some of these proponents think this is the only way. Alternatively though, there are many who look at regenerative grazing with skepticism, seeing it as simply Big Beef in Small Beef’s clothing, and point instead to another solution for bringing life back to dead and dying lands: re-wilding.
According to the Rewilding Institute, rewilding is defined as a:
Comprehensive, often large-scale, conservation effort focused on restoring sustainable biodiversity and ecosystem health by protecting core wild/wilderness areas, providing connectivity between such areas, and protecting or reintroducing apex predators and highly interactive species (keystone species).
In simpler terms, rewilding is an effort to restore lands back to their former wild state with the help of native flora and fauna, as a way to re-establish biodiversity and overall ecological health.
Photo: Chuck Szmurlo, CC 2.5, Wikimedia Commons
As Jennifer Molidor at the Center for Biological Diversity explains, lands damaged by agricultural practices that deplete soils and contribute to mass biodiversity loss, can benefit immensely from rewilding. “Promoting the restoration of native plants and ecosystems can revitalize areas degraded by agriculture,” she explains. “Agriculture is the greatest threat to biodiversity in the world because it is responsible for so much land use. It destroys forests and grasslands, transforms landscapes, degrades ecosystems, fragments habitat and eliminates food sources for wildlife.”
In the UK, which is farther ahead than the US and Canada on rewilding, the government has experimented with various controversial policies and incentives to rewild land, drawing mixed reactions from farmers, landowners and conservationists.
In the US, studies such as the recent Rewilding the American West, Molidor notes, “have shown how impactful the restoration of native animals like wolves and bison and beavers can be on the rewilding process.” Also, removal of invasive plants and/or livestock, and prioritization of intact ecosystems, “which in turn results in healthier soil beds, cleaner water, and less agricultural driven pollution like pesticides and runoff,” she says, all result in the rejuvenation of overall biodiversity.
Photo: Brianna R. on Unsplash
But what about claims that non-native grazing cattle can be the saviours of the soil and land? Molidor deems cattle an invasive species. “They did not evolve with native ecosystems, so even with grazing practices intended to minimize harm, they’ll fall short in promoting biodiversity—at best. And at worst, they will have devastating impacts on wildlife and habitat.” She adds that cows compete with native wildlife for food and notes that because cows are inevitably removed for slaughter, “they contribute nothing to the scavengers and insects that support biodiversity and healthy soils.”
Molidor also points out that when animals are farmed for profit, even if done with some degree of regeneration in mind, the land can never be the true priority. “The reality is that grazing too often becomes overgrazing. The commercial arrangement of meat production requires larger herds to be financially feasible, which means more soil degradation even in the best-case scenario.” Reliance on local water supplies, production of more manure than the land requires, and grazing patterns different from native grazers, she adds, “all take a negative toll overall in more arid places, on native plants and animals.”
Alternatively, rewilding instead focuses on reintroducing and/or better supporting animals originally meant to be in specific spaces. “In some areas, such as historically grazed grasslands and plains, removal of livestock and restoring native grazers like wild bison is one of the best ways to rewild the land,” Molidor states. And in areas not previously grazed by native animals, she adds, “removal of livestock alone, or removal of invasive plants, is a huge first step in habitat restoration.”
Photo: Nathan Anderson on Unsplash
While in theory the efforts of rewilding appear beneficial—even crucial, there is much standing in the way of putting this vital solution into practice on a large scale. Molidor says it’s just easier for animal farmers to continue with business as usual than to consider this “large, necessary transformation of the industry” because of government funding available for meat and dairy production. While there are some funds available for agricultural producers making conservation efforts, they pale in comparison to farming subsidies. And as Molidor adds, these conservation initiatives are often "ill-defined and poorly regulated, while still encouraging grazing even in conservation areas.” Increasing funding for those farmers wanting to transition their lands in the right ways is key, but Molidor believes laws and regulations regarding regenerative agriculture and rewilding, created and upheld at both federal and local levels, are desperately needed, too.
Clean air and water and a world with wildlife depends on it,” she says. “And we do, too.”