FE5.8 - Home on the Rangelands: The Beef and the Butterflies (Part 2) - Future Ecologies

Episode Transcript
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Introduction Voiceover (00:00):
You are listening to Season Five of
Future Ecologies.

Adam Huggins (00:06):
All right, here we go.

Mendel Skulski (00:07):
Okay.

Welcome back. I'm Adam. And this is Mendel.

Hey!

And today we are continuing our discussion of
rangelands in the West, focusingon my home state of Cowlifornia.

So if you haven't yet, you want to catch
up with the first episode inthis series, where last time
around Adam, you were 100% prolivestock, basically
unrecognizable. How are youfeeling about cows today?

Well, today, I am basically on the fence.

Are you going to come down on the grazed or the
ungrazed side of the fence?

I mean, I always thought that I wanted to be on
the ungrazed side of the fence.And certainly, in places like
Cache Creek, which we coveredearlier this season, I'd say
that I firmly want to be on thatside of the fence, because that
is the side of the fence withall of the wildflowers.

Right, yeah cows were not doing that landscape
any favors.

I don't think so. But down here in California, I'm
just not quite so sure anymore.Because it seems like sometimes,
the wildflowers and all of therare species might actually be
on the grazed side of the fence.

That would complicate your very
wildflower-centric worldview.

It does! And learning about how livestock can
be used for all sorts ofbenefits on California's highly
invaded rangelands hasdefinitely rocked my world. But
at the same time, you know, inthe back of my mind, I'm still
thinking, that's great and allon private range lands, but on
our public lands, can't we dobetter? Can't we be using other

(01:55):
tools? Do we have to be sharingour public lands with cows?

Right... you'd think on public lands, we could
find a way to have ourwildflowers without relying on
an introduced ungulate.

That's been my contention. But of course, there
are a lot of important valuesout there on the land, and
wildflowers aren't the only one.

Hmmm that's surprisingly broad minded of
you, Adam.

I would take credit, but sadly, I can't. It's
when I put the question topodcaster Ashley Ahern, whose
work helped catalyze thisseries, that she reminded me of
that.

Ashley Ahearn (02:35):
Well, as you know, much of the American West
is public lands, and the peoplewho can afford to own tracts of
land large enough to supportsustainable ranching — again,
there's a right way and there'sa wrong way; there's a harmful
way, And there's a less harmfulway to have cows on a landscape.
One key factor is the density ofthe cows over the the acreage
that they are grazing — So tohave enough acres to graze

(02:59):
enough cows to make a living inthe system in which we live, you
need a lot, a lot of acres. Thepeople who can afford a lot, a
lot of acres anymore in theWest, are millionaire and
billionaire ranch owners now. Sofor many of the small mom and
pop operations, they wouldn't beable to buy the land, they need

(03:21):
to raise cows sustainably, i.e.not overly concentrated on the
landscape. So that's where thepublic lands and the ability to
use those public lands becomescritical to be able to make a
living within the capitalistsystem that we have for beef
production in this country.

Hmmm... while you and I might be focused on
the ecological outcomes, Ashleyis here to remind us that there
are also huge cultural andeconomic dimensions to the
issue.

Yes. For her, irrespective of the potential
ecological benefits thatlivestock can provide on public
lands, we should be consideringthe ranchers themselves.

Without the access to those acres, literally
just just the the space to dothis job, it's not possible.
It's not as simple as justsaying public lands belong to
everybody. We need to keep cowsoff because they're bad. Again,
it's how do we have cows onthese public lands in a way that
does not prevent everyone elsefrom enjoying them in the
various ways that they want toenjoy them, whether it's

(04:22):
hunting, whether it's mountainbiking, whether it's hiking, or
cross country skiing, I do allof those things. And I also want
to do that on the public landswhere cows are grazing.

Yeah, that's fair, I think. And even for
those of us who are focused onecological outcomes, if small
ranchers can't make a go of it,then using cows for conservation
really just won't be an option.

Exactly. If we want the benefits livestock can
provide in certaincircumstances, then we need to
keep small ranchers in business.And those small ranchers often
rely on public lands. That's theargument And if you accept that
argument, then the devil is inthe details, or rather... it's

(05:06):
in the weeds.

Okay, if we're having cows, how much does it
cost per cow per acre, right? Orhow many cows are allowed? Or at
what times of year? And how longcan they be on a certain chunk
of public land? Those are reallyreally thorny debates. And it's
where very differentperspectives, lived experiences
clash.

So today, we're going to have some thorny
debates about what it means tohave livestock on public lands,
or at least on public lands incoastal California. And we're
going to look at a specificpiece of public land where
livestock are being employed togive some endangered species a
new lease on life. From FutureEcologies, this is Home on the

(05:51):
Rangelands, part two — The Beefand the Butterflies.

Introduction Voiceover (06:00):
Broadcasting from the unceded, shared and
asserted territories of theMusqueam, Squamish, and
Tsleil-Waututh, this is FutureEcologies – exploring the shape
of our world through ecology,design, and sound.

Okay, where do we begin? In the thorns or in
the weeds?

We're going to begin in the weeds, at Tulare
Hill.

Christal Niederer (07:21):
Hi how are you?

Good morning, how are you?

Doing well. I'm Christal.

Nice to meet you, I'm Adam. Thank you so much for
coming out and meeting me herethis morning.

Yeah, this whole hill is fascinating. It's
very different.

So we're starting in the weeds with a
case study. Who is this? Andwhere are we?

My name is Christal Niederer, and I'm a
senior biologist with CreeksideScience. I've been working here
17 years now. And one of thefirst places that I started
working out here was this sitehere, which is Tulare Hill.
We're in South San Jose.

Uhh... South San Jose?

Yeah. So a brief California geography lesson that
will be important later, Ipromise. The Bay Area, where I'm
from, is basically a giganticurban sprawl wrapped around the
San Francisco Bay on the centralcoast of the state. There is San
Francisco out on the peninsula,Oakland across the way, and at

(08:16):
the south end of the bay, a citythat is actually larger than
both of those, the city of SanJose.

Okay, so a lot of people. How many, exactly?

Well, depending on how you define it, there are
about 8 million people in theBay Area. And at the southern
tip of this region, just southof San Jose, is this little nub
of land called Tulare Hill. AndChristal and I are standing on
top of it, looking out throughthe midwinter haze over that
urban sprawl.

It's a little bit foggy and smoggy right now.
So you don't see the whole bayarea from here. But you can see
we've got a city here.

This is such a California view. You get the
there's a highway, there aresubdivisions. There is a natural
gas power plant. There'sagricultural fields, large ones.

A solar farm

And there's a solar farm. And then of course,
the the rangelands on thehillsides. I mean, it's quite a
quite a slice of this place,isn't it?

Yeah. Over to our right, we have the Mount
Hamilton range, kind of theInner Coast ranges. And then on
the other side, we have theSanta Cruz Mountains, which goes
all the way out to the PacificOcean here. And so this spot
right here... I kind of call itThe Plug. It's sort of where
these two mountain rangesconverge. It's kind of an
interesting stepping stone orwildlife corridor between these

(09:37):
two mountain ranges.

So picture two mountain ranges, one on either
side. On the coast side, theslopes are green and forested.
And on the inland side, they aredrier and grassy. And then
there's this little steppingstone of a hill in the gap
between them.

Okay, and that's Tulare Hill.

Yep.

Why does she call it "the plug"?

Yeah, so we're on the plug. So what on
earth does that mean? I'm gonna,I'm gonna get to that take a
little while.

That... that could be the description for our
whole show. But what is actuallyspecial about this place?

Well, for starters, Tulare Hill is special
because it has serpentine soils.

Serpentine is California's State rock. But
what's interesting about theserpentine soils, it's
chemically very strange. And soit's actually a very difficult
environment for plants to growin general. So you have low
nitrogen, low phosphorus,generally. And so you think of
like your NPK, those threenumbers on your fertilizer bag

(10:44):
that plants want. This is reallylow in those.

Yeah, we talked about serpentinite soils, way
back in episode 1.3. But if Iremember correctly, they're not
only low in the sort ofnutrients that plants need. But
they're also just kind of toxic.Right?

Yeah, it can have a lot of toxic heavy metals
like nickel and chromium, thingslike that. There could be very
different chemical compositionsfrom site to site. But yeah,
it's a very harsh environment.And so a lot of people think,
oh, that sounds really bad. Likethat sounds like a bad place for
plants. But it's, it's just...it's different. It's a difficult
environment. So we havedifferent kinds of things. So

(11:23):
you end with a lot of rareplants. Just on this hill, we
have at least two endangeredspecies that are just known from
this area. So things that canreally only grow in Serpentine.
And then you have things thathave a more widespread
tolerance. But because we haveso many invasive plants,
especially in our grasslands.Our grasslands are really known

(11:46):
for being really invaded. Eventhough they used to have a much
wider distribution, they kind ofend up having refuges here and
these weird soils. You still seethe wildflowers shows here. And
that's kind of what people getexcited about is just being able
to come out here where you don'thave a lot of those invasive
grasses, and just seeing a tonof flowers.

Now I see why you chose this place.

Well, I wasn't actually there at the right time
for the show. So honestly, theplace was a bit drab.

I mean, yeah, most people don't get that
excited about it. It's a rockylittle hill. It's a very rocky
little hill.

But in the right season, I'm sure it's
spectacular.

Right. The point is that because of the soils on
this site are uniquely terrible.Those introduced grasses that
are so pesky throughoutCalifornia, they can't get a
foothold.

That's it.

The Serpentine soils are very low in
nitrogen. And traditionally,historically, they've kind of
kept a lot of these non nativeinvasive grasses out it's just
been a little bit too tough ofan environment for them.

The serpentine soils keep out most woody
vegetation too. So the sitestays open. It's a perfect place
for wildflowers and all thoseother rare species that like
open ecosystems, on the otherhand, not a great place for
grasses. So that's why it was sojarring when crystal introduced
me to a special someone.

This is Dottie the cow. She's been
decomposing here for... boy, howmany years now... several years.
But we were out here when shewas freshly... freshly no longer
with us. And now she's just ascattered pile of bones.

Dottie... is a cow... skeleton.

Yes. And it's not just bright, bleached white
bones scattered across the topof Tulare Hill.

Yes, we are walking through lots of dried
cow patties.

So even on a harsh site like this one, there
are livestock. Why?

If this area is not grazed, it just really
grasses over to the point whereit's hard to walk in here
because you can't see the rocks.

But I thought the whole point was that
serpentine soils, keep thegrasses away. What's going on
here?

Well, to answer that question, might I introduce
you to Stuart Weiss.

Stu Weiss (14:13):
So I'm a conservation ecologist in the San Francisco
Bay Area.

Stu has worked on a lot of issues, but he's
probably best known for his workon butterflies.

Stu Weiss (14:24):
I started chasing Checkerspot butterflies, the Bay
Checkerspot in particular, backin 1979 When I was a freshman,
and I found myself up on JasperRidge biological preserve with a
butterfly net in hand, chasingbutterflies through incredible
fields of wildflowers. And I'mstill doing that today. The

(14:47):
butterfly has been my muse —kind of ecological and
conservation muse... becauseit's really well studied, lives
in a very unusual habitat and istightly threatened with
extinction if we don't managethe habitats correctly.

And butterflies aren't just a pretty face.
They're a serious business.

Stu Weiss (15:11):
Yeah, I consider them to be a pretty strong indicator
of the state of an ecosystembecause the vast majority of
diversity is in the insectworld. And butterflies are our
window into the insect worldbecause they're large, they're

(15:31):
easy to tell apart... most ofthe time.

So Stu is out there, chasing rare butterflies
and studying their ecology,which is challenging because
butterfly populations are superdynamic.

Stu Weiss (15:44):
The volatility of these butterfly populations is
really a function of very highreproductive output, and really
high mortality. So when part ofthe population is doing well
another part may be doing reallypoorly. But then a few years
later, it will switch.

There are these really strong fluctuations
across landscapes based onthings like topography, and
vegetation, connectivity, all ofthese different factors. Anyway,
one of Stu's subjects is the BayCheckerspot butterfly, which
today is really endangered.

Stu Weiss (16:21):
And I would venture to guess that the Bay
Checkerspot may at one pointhave been one of the most common
butterflies in the grasslands inthe Bay Area. And then suddenly,
you get this massivetransformation and it's now
isolated on these serpentiniteoutcrops. Then those, especially

(16:42):
on the San Francisco peninsula,they get progressively
developed. So now we're lookingat like remnants of remnants.

So... Bay Checkerspots are now just in a
few places.

And one of those places is Tulare Hill. You
really only find them onserpentinite sites these days,
because that's where their hostplants live.

Stu Weiss (17:05):
Plantago erecta, which is the most important
plant in the world, believe itor not.

Is that a fact?

Well, the jury is still out. But I do have to
admit they're kind of cute.

Is this a plantain?

Yeah, it's a plantain. Christal showed me
some in the field.

It's actually kind of hard to tell what we're
looking at this time of year. Tome this almost looks like a
little bit of like the fakelawn, you know the little
astroturm or something — theselittle tiny short guys, but this
isn't grass. Some of this isPlantago erecta. So that is
California dwarf plantain. Thatis the host plant of the Bay

(17:44):
Checkerspot butterfly. And soyou can see where grass... a
non-native annual grass you knowcan easily be as tall as your
knee or something like that. Soyou're just not going to have
these tiny little, pinky-highplants when you've got knee-high
grass

Mendel, these guys are real small, like itsy bitsy,
teeny tiny plants.

Why would this butterfly choose such a tiny
plant as a host?

So Bay Checkerspot butterflies are
incredibly specialized. So theywant to eat the Plantago erecta
and some similar species thathave iridoid glycosides in them

Iridoid... glycosides.

Yeah, the iridoid glycosides. They
accumulate them in their intheir body and they make them
taste bad, basically.

Okay. Are you up for a bit of butterfly biology?

Is that a real question?

That's, uh...

Of course I am!

Okay,so in California, we have a kind of
weirdly inverted seasonalcalendar, where our kind of
winter rainy season is whenthings start to germinate.
Christal and I were standing onTulare Hill in mid December.

So right now, when things start to germinate,
that's sort of a cue to thecaterpillars. The caterpillars
have been in a dormant stagecalled diapause — over that
long, hot, dry summer, they'vegot nothing to eat.

And like clockwork, they're coming out of
dormancy.

So they're going to be coming up waking up
and starting to eat thisplantain that's all over the
place. They're tiny. They'reprobably a quarter inch long,
maybe. Little blackish graybuddies

With orange spots on them.

They're just absorbing all that heat with
their little black bodies. Andthen the orange spots are kind
of a little bit of a warningcoloration like "hey, birds"

"I taste bad. Don't eat me."

"I can lay out here I can actually bask in
the sun in full view of theworld." It's a huge advantage
for them to be able to just layout and get the sun. You know,
they're Californians — they'reworking on their tan, and
they're enjoying the sun.

Aw...

And their job right now is just be the Hungry
Caterpillar and eat as much asthey can bask in the sun just
really absorb that energy.

And so they eat and they grow, and they eat, and
they grow. And eventually theyget fat enough, hopefully, to
form a chrysalis.

And they'll do that right on the ground or
kind of in some vegetation.

Once they break out of that chrysalis, they're
full fledged butterfly adults.And immediately, first thing
they do when they are adults,can you guess?

Uh... they buy alcohol?

No silly, they mate immediately!

Oh of course.

And then of course, the females lay the eggs
in a big clump.

Which is interesting, because some
species will do it one at atime. But these will do it in a
big clump of you know, likemaybe a couple hundred eggs
even, right off the bat.

And that's it, they've gotten it out of the
way. Now they can just flyaround for a few days until they
die.

They only live about a week, maybe 10 days
as an adult butterfly.

It's kind of funny that we call them
butterflies when they'reactually just caterpillars most
of their life.

I know, right?

So then what happens?

So they lay the eggs. The eggs, again, take
probably another week to 10 daysor something to hatch, and then
the race is on. So at thispoint, things are generally
starting to dry up. And probablyabout 99% of them are going to
die of starvation. It's crazy.But again, if you're putting out
a few 100 eggs, you know, theycan't all survive, or we'd have

(21:20):
too many Bay Checkerspotbutterflies.

And if they're lucky, they can eat enough
vegetation before everythingdries out to survive the summer,
through dormancy — diapause

They get in little cracks, might be under a
rock, something like that.They're just sort of on the soil
and they just kind of shut downand they wait for it to rain
like about the timer and now orthings start to green up and the
plantago starts germinating andsomething there signals them —
it's time to get up start eatingand laying the sun.

And then the cycle starts all over again.

Okay, so this little endangered butterfly,
which is actually really mostlya caterpillar is super reliant
on this tiny little nativeplantain, and therefore the open
serpentinite sites on which itgrows.

Yes. And of course, the butterflies are just
one of many species reliant onsites like these. Just on my
visit, we saw several endangeredplants, a jackrabbit, raptors,
and also signs of otherinhabitants.

You and I both know there's a ton of
wildlife living in there, likeyou said, birds, there's
insects, there's mammals, allkinds of things live in
grasslands.

So sites like these are super important for
biodiversity. But butterfliesare a key indicator. And back in
the 1980s, Stu started noticingsomething strange and kind of
alarming.

Stu Weiss (22:39):
I've been working on some of these populations for
nearly 40 years now, so I'veseen the booms and busts. We
have a good fix on thehistorical range of variability.
But then we saw these changes inthe habitat when the livestock —
the cattle grazing — wasremoved. Suddenly, the field of

(23:02):
wildflowers over the course of acouple of years turned into a...
just a sea of non-native annualgrass. And the populations just
nosedived or went extinct inareas that weren't being grazed.
We didn't know why. We just knewit was happening.

Grass.... growing on serpentinite... Why?
How?

We will get to that, right after the break.

Hey, me again. If you're listening to Future
Ecologies, and well, here youare, I'd bet that sustainability
is something that matters toyou. And more than that, you've
probably asked yourself, "whatdoes that word sustainable mean,
anyhow? How do we get there?What's my part in it?" You know,

(24:05):
the big questions. Questionsthat, as we're discovering in
this series, and in all of ourepisodes, have answers with no
shortage of nuance, orcomplexity. And that's exactly
why we make this show. Whichbrings me to another somewhat
smaller question ofsustainability. That is our

(24:28):
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about it publicly before, butAdam doesn't get paid at all for
this work. He does it on theside of his day job as a
restoration ecologist. As forme, I make significantly less
than minimum wage for the timethat I put in, which is

(24:48):
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(25:10):
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(25:51):
back to the show.

Okay, Adam

Mendel. This is Future Ecologies. And we're
about to find out why introducedgrasses started growing on
serpentine soils in California,putting all the rare species
that have been surviving inthese little refugia at risk.

Yeah. And there's actually a pretty simple answer,
but Stu wasn't able to make theconnection until the early 90s
When he learned about somethingcalled dry nitrogen deposition.

Stu Weiss (26:24):
And it was suddenly like, Oh, now I know what's
going on. You know, like aproverbial light bulb. Took
about five years to learn enoughabout nitrogen. The nitrogen
cycle is like the mostfiendishly complex part of
biogeochemistry. But after aboutfive years, I've published a
paper called "Cars, Cows andCheckerspot Butterflies".

And this paper, "Cars, Cows and Checkerspot
Butterflies", has become a bitof a classic in the field of
ecology. The gist of it is that,and I don't know if you know
this, Mendel, California isknown for its car culture.

Oh really?

And as a result for air pollution. And many of
those pollutants containnitrogen, which eventually
settles out onto the land.

Stu Weiss (27:11):
Smog is fertilizer, it acts as nitrogen fertilizer
on ecosystems exposed to it. Forabout a decade, I've been
staring at this brown cloud overthe southern part of Silicon
Valley, that was all blowingtowards me on the prevailing
winds. We start dumping largeamounts of nitrogen on these

(27:35):
habitats, you know, on the orderof 10 to 20 pounds per acre, or
kilograms per hectare, per year.And we do it for decades, the
nitrogen limitation of the soilsjust goes away. And the grasses

(27:56):
invade.

The nitrogen in the air pollution is fertilizing
the grasses. But I thought airpollution causes acid rain. What
is dry nitrogen deposition?

I mean, to simplify things dramatically,
basically, acid rain is whennitrogen or sulfuric compounds
are deposited on land throughrain. So when it's wet, and then
dry deposition is when theysettle out in particulate
matter... when it's dry. Drydeposition also includes
absorption of gases on thesurfaces and directly into the

(28:32):
leaves of plants through theirstomata. So California is mostly
dry, we have mostly drydeposition.

Stu Weiss (28:39):
You know, I've been trying for a few decades now to
kind of get the nitrogendeposition on the map for
biodiversity conservation. Andit's been like really hard. It's
the biggest global environmentalchange that very few people are

(29:00):
talking about. So the nitrogencycle is more disrupted than the
carbon cycle.

And by the way, the implications of nitrogen
deposition go way beyond grassand butterflies. In addition to
this kind of terrestrialeutrophication, Stu points to
coastal dead zones and majorhealth impacts, both direct and
indirect.

Stu Weiss (29:21):
But in one sense, we're more addicted to using
large amounts of nitrogen thanwe are using fossil fuel because
we have to feed the planet,which requires large amounts of
nitrogen for high intensityagriculture.

Curse you, Fritz Haber!

I mean, this is probably far from the worst
thing that Fritz Haber did, butit still does have lots of
consequences. For example, Ihave super terrible grass
allergies, and so do a lot ofother folks.

Stu Weiss (29:56):
Even in non-serpentine grasslands, the
nitrogen deposition makes thegrass grow a lot more. Annual
grasses love nitrogen. Wellincreased grass growth means
you're gonna have a lot moregrass pollen in the air. And the
biggest allergy problem inCalifornia is annual grass

(30:17):
pollen. So you think about thebillions of dollars of direct
cost, morbidity, some cases andmaybe even mortality just from
respiratory distress, but thensimply the unquantifiable amount
of human misery. So I tellpeople, atmospheric nitrogen

(30:40):
deposition really is somethingto sneeze at.

So for everything from allergies to
ocean dead zones, nitrogen isthe culprit.

Guilty as charged. And on California's serpentinite
soils, it allows grasses to moveright on in.

Stu Weiss (31:00):
You need some way of cropping the grasses keeping
them from taking over. Andthat's where the cows come in.
They don't go after thewildflowers unless there's no
grass around. And they're quitegood at it.

So back in the 1980s, when cows were bad, and
lots of land managers werepulling them off of public
lands, it revealed a problemthat no one had been paying
attention to.

Stu Weiss (31:28):
We sort of took the empirical observation that "Oh,
when we remove the cattle, weget the grasses coming in," then
found the driver of that fromthe smog.

So in the last episode, when Clayton and Lynn
were talking about how we reallyonly realized all of the
benefits of cattle grazing forconservation in California,
after we lost them, they werereferring to situations just
like this.

Just like this one.

Stu Weiss (31:57):
Yeah, there's been this huge turn around with the
majority of the conservationcommunity. With regard to cattle
grazing. We saw the consequencesof pulling the cattle off of
this novel California annualgrassland ecosystem that's just

(32:18):
like a mix of native and nonnative species, the non native
species are now naturalized andthey're not going away. So we
have to manage them. So we sawthe consequences of the no
grazing paradigm. And it doesn'twork.

Okay, doing nothing doesn't work. But we do
have tools other than grazing.

We do. And I did push them on this. Like, aren't
there other ways to remove thesegrasses that don't involve
livestock?

The big three I feel like people talk about in
managing grasslands are going tobe grazing, fire and mowing. And
it's... whichever site you'reon, you know, one is gonna make
more sense than the other. It'sreally hard to burn here. Just
logistically we have... nobody,nobody wants their house burned
down.

So prescribed fire, while it can work really
well, it's pretty challenging inurban area, right? As we
discussed in the last episode,because people are both super
sensitive about fire risk, andalso about air quality.

That's kind of ironic, given that it's air
pollution that's causing theproblems in the first place.

It sure is. So prescribed fire is just not
going to happen on this site,and mowing. Well, Christal and
Stu actually do mow some oftheir sites.

Woof! You know, you wouldn't want to mow
this 300 acres, super steep,rocky area. You're making a
frowny face there, like, itwould just it just wouldn't
happen. Like if you... just itwould be... to make it happen
would be, you know, an enormousamount of money.

And, you know, working for a small conservation
organization, I can tell youjust how compelling those
economic incentives cansometimes be.

There's an economic incentive to have
cattle, somebody's making moneyoff of raising cattle. A lot of
these sites the grazer actuallypays to have their cattle on
here versus if I wanted somebodyto mow this. They're not gonna
pay me to mow this. So it's justit's great for us, who are these
Bay Checkerspot butterflybiologists — we're like "this is

(34:26):
the perfect tool" because thesecows just really want the grass
and they don't want the specificBay Checkerspot plants.

Which from this perspective makes cows even
better than fire or mowing,because they're more selective.

That makes practical sense. But, like,
really, let's be honest here.Can cows be a substitute for a
natural process like fire?

That is the million dollar question. And you
know, I asked the rangelands,folks, and they told me, "yes,
not a perfect substitute. Butyes." And, you know, the reason
I first got interested in TulareHill, is that there was a
wildfire there in 2004 and Itburned through both grazed and

(35:11):
ungrazed areas on the site thatChristal and Stu and others were
actively studying.

Huh! Okay, so it was like a natural experiment?

Yeah.

What did they find?

We saw fire results that were very good. We
see, you know, the grazingresults are very good. And when
I say very good, we have lowernon-native annual grass cover.
We're generally wanting to shiftfrom grasses to forbs — to the
wildflowers. And you know, thegrazing, the burning the mowing
will do that. So it's kind of amatter of how long is that

(35:41):
effect going to last? Can you...Can you do this every year? Can
you afford to do it every year?

To summarize, both the wildfire and the grazing had
similar positive impacts on thesite. But those impacts were
ephemeral. They just didn'tlast. The grasses would creep
back in to dominate after acouple of years, it was only in
the areas that were continuouslygrazed after the fire, that the
effects were lasting. I mean,you'd have to burn once every

(36:08):
year or two to substitute forthe cows, and both Stu and
Christal feel that that's justnot possible for this site.

Stu Weiss (36:15):
You know, we get this great result for a couple of
years, but then the grasses justcome roaring back unless you
have the cattle on there. And itmight be changing, but the
ability to consistently pull offprescribed burns at the right

(36:35):
frequency to manage habitats.That is so far from the current
situation.

And apparently Bay Area firefighters are really
type A about putting wildfiresout, even when land managers are
literally begging them to have alighter touch.

Stu Weiss (36:55):
They bring in the air tankers. And the air tankers are
dropping diammonium phosphate,which is like the ultimate
fertilizer for something likeserpentine grassland.

They bring in the air tankers. And the air
tankers are dropping diammoniumphosphate, which is like the
ultimate fertilizer forsomething like serpentine
grassland. Oh, whoa... so inputting up the wildfire, the
firefighters are just dumpingfuel on the other fire, which is
the introduced grasses.

Yes, if fuel was fertilizer, that is exactly what
they're doing.

Okay, so fire is great. But we're back to
grazing.

Stu Weiss (37:29):
Yeah, I just... I don't know, any method that can
work at a landscape scale tokeep the annual grasses in
check, other than cattlegrazing.

So we might say that Tulare Hill is a sort of
poster child for using cows inconservation — in California, at
least. But it's also the posterchild for something else,
because it put a new spotlighton nitrogen pollution.

Stu Weiss (38:13):
Back in 1999, just when the paper was in press,
there was a proposal for a 600megawatt gas fired power plant
just right next to Tulare Hill.

A gas fired power plant... that means even
more nitrogen!

Yeah, speaking of adding fuel to the fire. And
after some public criticism, thecompany behind the power plant
proposal decided to develop amitigation plan. And they ended
up hiring Stu to help.

Stu Weiss (38:46):
I wanted to establish a precedent for mitigating for
the nitrogen deposition. Theywanted to set a precedent of "we
can actually build a new modern,gas fired power plant in
California." This was the firstone that had been proposed in
decades.

And there it was, at the base of Tulare Hill.

We're on the Metcalf Energy Center Ecological
Preserve.

Is that what that is?

That is the Metcalf Energy Center right
there. It's a 20 year old plant.It is a natural gas plant. What
is interesting about this plantis this is the first that had to
mitigate for its nitrogenimpacts. That power plant is
down in the valley on the richsoil. It's not wrecking the...
it's not physically on theserpentine. It's not, you know,

(39:34):
like a bunch of condos on theSerpentine. But it's still
impacting something next to it.And that set the precedent for
power plants that are farthernorth. They ended up mitigating
and buying some serpentineproperty down here in South San
Jose. So again, very far fromthe impact, but that nitrogen is
in that plume that's coming downthrough the valley, hitting the

(39:56):
plug here, and dropping outunder the soil. That's a whole
new thing people have tomitigate for now, which is
great.

Oh, she calls it "the plug" because it's kind of
at the bottom of a funnel ofthese mountain ranges...
catching all of the nitrogencoming from all of the air
pollution from the entire BayArea.

Bingo.

The prevailing winds pretty much
come down from San Francisco,they go through the Gate, they
take a right hand turn down theSan Francisco Bay, and then they
kind of get blocked right here,because this is that little
stepping stone, that littletight spot between these two
mountain ranges. Everything kindof just halts a little bit here.
So this site gets a lot more ofthe nitrogen pollution than a

(40:39):
lot of other sites regionally.

Hence, the plug. And the precedent set by this
rocky little hill has translatedinto hundreds of millions of
dollars of mitigation fundingfor conservation in the Bay
Area. And it helped spur thecreation of the Santa Clara
Valley Habitat ConservationPlan.

Stu Weiss (41:00):
That's gonna target 42,000 acres, of which about
12,000 is Serpentine grasslandand Bay Checkerspot. Rest of the
land base is for California RedLegged frogs, California Tiger
Salamanders. There's like 19species that are covered under
the plan.

Yeah, and we can all have our nice city and
our big economy and all ourbusinesses, and still have, you
know, open space and a lot ofconservation and all these rare
species that we're so interestedin.

So today, Tulare Hill is protected by a mix of
public and private landowners,and managed for conservation and
mitigation. But the nitrogenhasn't stopped falling from the
sky.

Weathercaster (41:48):
Forecast today, same as yesterday — 100% chance
of nitrogen

This whole question about mitigation and
cows, really begs the questionof... is this just a bandaid for
all the other things that aregoing wrong? Or is it actually a
way to deal with the rootproblem?

I mean, what I hear from Christal there is this
sort of articulation of kind oflike status quo
environmentalism. And I feelabout this statement, kind of
like how I feel about the use ofcows and conservation in
general, right? It sort of is acomfortable idea that we can
have our status quo way of doingthings, we can have our status

(42:32):
quo economy, we can have ourstatus quo land management vis a
vis cows, and we can still havenature and species. There is
really good evidence on the sideof people who are saying these
things, who are showing resultsfrom mitigation funding and what
it can do in terms of protectingland and making space for
species at risk. And, you know,showing that cows are also a big

(42:56):
part of providing that space. Atthe same time, I think it limits
the conversation and underplaysthe costs of doing things this
way. And, you know, maybe a lackof imagination for what's
possible.

And then on the flip side, maybe it's simply the
most practical way of dealingwith the situation that we have
under the condition of a reallyurbanized space with lots of
cars, and lots of people, andlots of... lots of impacts.

Maybe, Mendel... maybe. I'm a... I'm a strong
maybe.

Well, okay, I guess now that now that we've
got the weeds out of the way,and it turns out, the cows are
eating all of them. I'd say it'stime we get to those thorns,
shall we?

Yes. For all of you anxious listeners who have
been suffering through over 90minutes of pro-cow content at
this point, I think it is timeto take the bull by the horns.
Or maybe to take the bull by thethorns?

Ok ok ok, before you go any further, I think we
have to talk a little more aboutthe elephant sized cow in the
room.

What do you mean?

We kicked off this series with the preface
that livestock agriculture emitsgreenhouse gas and results in
deforestation and that we shouldall collectively eat less meat.

Yes, those are the facts that I was hoping would
frame this conversation. And,you know, I want to reiterate
that, in this series, I'mlooking at a pretty narrow
topic, which is the benefits andthe drawbacks of small ranchers
grazing livestock on publicconservation lands — that are
already open ecosystems,critically

Yeah.

And even within this discussion, obviously,
there is a lot of disagreement.

I get you have a more narrow focus with that, but
I think it is important that wetake those starting facts and
put a little bit more meat onthose bones.

Sure, yeah. Okay, let's do it.

So just the hard numbers — livestock agriculture,
globally, accounts for about 14and a half percent of all human
caused greenhouse gas emissions.

That sounds about right. Although the number might
vary a bit depending on whatyou're including.

Right, and cattle for beef and dairy
account for 60% of that total.

Sixty percent!

About half of those emissions are related to
feed production, deforestation,and transportation.

In other words, all the carbon associated with
clearing land for cattle, andgrowing and shipping crops to
support them.

Yeah.

And most of that land clearing is happening in
South America, by the way.

The other half of those emissions are
attributed to entericfermentation.

Cow burps, the side effect of the rumen.

And from manure management.

Right, there are problems at both ends.

To say the least. So just to put this all
in perspective, beef requiresabout 20 times as much land and
produces about 20 times as muchgreenhouse gas as an equivalent
plant protein.

Right, which just underlines the point that most
of us should be eating lessmeat, and especially less beef.

Definitely. And it's about to get even thornier
because we've been exclusivelydiscussing grass fed, or free
range livestock.

Actually, that's that's not entirely the case,
Mendel.

Uh...?

This gets complicated, but most beef cows
in North America are raised onpasture for some portion of
their life, and then finished ongrain, often on a feedlot. When
you're picturing, you know, likeindustrial agriculture, that's
what you're picturing.

Yeah.

Beef that are sold as grass fed, comes from cows
that live out their entire liveson the ranch, but that's not
very common. Clayton's ranch,for example, advertises itself
as grass fed, and grainfinished. So it's not as if
ranchers who graze theirlivestock on conservation lands
are exclusively grass finished.Some are and some aren't. Some

(47:01):
of these cows are destined forthe feedlot.

How do grass and grain finishing stack up in
terms of climate?

That is a very complicated question. My
understanding is that grainfinished cattle mature faster,
and get bigger faster, and sorequire less pasture. And that
means that proponents oftenclaim that they produce less
greenhouse gas over theirlifetimes. Then again, when you

(47:31):
take into account the fulllifecycle of producing and
transporting all of that grain,and also adjust for carbon
sequestration benefitsassociated with well managed
grasslands, you could claim thatfeedlot cattle are worse for the
climate than grass finished.

Yeah, classic. Intensifying production will
create efficiencies in someplaces, while also concentrating
and exacerbating the problems inothers.

And you really do have people making arguments in
both directions. You know,people arguing that intensive
feedlot associated cattleproduction is better for the
climate and people arguing theexact opposite based on the data
available. And then of course,you have to take into account
the climate opportunity cost ofdevoting farmland and rangeland

(48:19):
to livestock production, whichis something that I'm planning
on covering in depth in the nextepisode, by the way.

Hmmm well that's good. But I guess what I'm
saying is that we actually needto be taking the climate crisis
into account even just withinthis narrow discussion.

Okay.

Well, because we've heard arguments that
livestock can help fight climatechange by preventing wildfires
and promoting soil carbonsequestration. But the reality
is that it's just hard toquantify those benefits or be
certain that they are lasting.

Right in carbon lingo you would say that it's
hard to guarantee theiradditionality and permanence.
But

But we can quantify the climate impacts of
cattle. And they are massive, wejust have to reduce the
emissions associated withlivestock agriculture in order
to mitigate climate disaster.And that's not going to happen
just through intensification orfeeding cows seaweed. There just
need to be fewer cows, period.Yeah. And just because you see

(49:24):
some happy looking cows grazingin a nice oak woodland, doesn't
mean they aren't part of thatproblem.

We are on the same page. Also, Mendel speaking of
happy cows, we haven't eventouched on the issue of animal
cruelty within industrialagriculture.

Right. Yeah, that's... that's a whole other
issue. And no doubt there's aseriously dark side to all meat
production

And feeding cows grass doesn't necessarily
sidestep it. All of the cattlethat we're talking about whether
grass fed, or grain finished,are destined for the
slaughterhouse.

Yeah, that's an unavoidable reality.

And that's because cows aren't native to North
America, they are only herebecause we find them useful and
tasty. So as long as most humansremain omnivorous and like to
eat beef, I think that it isfair to assume that the best
life that a cow can hope to havein this part of the world, at
this point in time, is living inherds on public conservation

(50:30):
lands.

At least relative to the typical
alternative.

Yes.

Okay. Well, well, those are the big thorns
in the background of all ofthis. Maybe now we zoom back to
just the negative impacts thatlivestock can have on the land
itself.

Yes, let us get back to the incredibly complex
and controversial conversation Iwas intending to have with this
series.

Yes, please.

Frankly, the list of impacts that cattle have on
the landscape is long. There'ssoil compaction, erosion,
destruction of riparian areas,grazing on desirable species,
spreading weeds, and undesirablespecies, water quality issues
associated with manure runoff,and preventing other wildlife

(51:19):
from using the landscape, eitherdue to their physical presence,
or the fencing or hunting thatoften accompanies their presence
on the landscape.

What do the rangeland people have to say
about it?

Well, among the rangelands folk that I spoke to,
there were some common refrains.For example, "no solution is a
silver bullet," right? Here'sStu again.

Stu Weiss (51:43):
Everybody always wants there to be like, "Oh,
here's the perfect solution thathas all positive impacts and no
negative impacts. And thatapplies everywhere." And it's
like, it just doesn't work thatway.

And when I asked Lynn and Clayton from the last
episode, they did admit to someof these downsides. But they
framed them as mostly havingoccurred in the past.

Lynn Huntsinger (52:05):
Oh, it could have been previously damaged by
livestock. You know, at somepoint, there were too many in
the state as a whole. Becauseafter the gold rush, everybody
left, leaving these herds ofcattle that in brought in to
feed miners, you know, behind.So we had kind of an excessive
number.

Clayton Koopmann (52:22):
During the 60s and 70s and 80s, there was
probably some grazing practicesthat went on that weren't
necessarily beneficial —Potential damage to riparian
corridors, to some aquatichabitat. There was probably some
overstocking. I prefer to usethe term overstocking as opposed
to overgrazing because it's, youknow, poor management practices
by the operator. He had too manycattle on the property.

As far as admissions of downsides go, I
have to say that those arepretty weak. I mean, can you
seriously say that cattlehaven't still been overstocked
in some places or allowed toovergraze more than occasionally
since the 70s. I mean, let alonethe gold rush.

I tend to agree with you. From my perspective,
both Lynn and Clayton are wavingaway ongoing issues that, you
know, are pretty apparent. But Isuspect that it's because
they're sensitive to the factthat cows still have a bad
reputation in many environmentalcircles, you know, myself case
in point. Despite the benefitsthat, you know, folks like Lynn

(53:31):
have spent their careersdemonstrating.

Yeah, no doubt, they're touchy about it.

It's understandable. The other thing
that all of the rangelandsproponents I spoke to told me is
that almost all of the downsidesI just listed, are result of bad
management. And that wellmanaged cattle can provide
pretty much all the benefitsthat we've been discussing,
while also mitigating away mostof the negative impacts. They

(53:55):
also emphasized that not allcattle grazing has a
conservation benefit. So whetherthe benefits outweigh the costs
depends on the management andthe context. Here's Christal
again.

A lot of people really, you know, "cows
are bad." And it's like, well,it's not... it's not that
simple. So I mean, cows changevegetation. So how are they
changing it? Are they changingit in a way that's helpful for,
you know, what you want for thebiodiversity there? Or are they
not? And that's really specificto the site?

And here's Lynn again.

Well, I think we need to realize that the
future ecology is one ofincreasing trade offs. I really
believe that. I've seen that allthis time. Cattle or sheep or
goats, all of those things,they're not to blame, right for
anything that they do thatreally is damaging. They are
subject to the management ofpeople. And one of the reasons
why managers value them isbecause you can graze them some

(54:52):
places and not graze themothers, you can take them off
and they're causing trouble.

So one could manage, for example, to reduce
soil compaction.

Stu Weiss (55:01):
So much of that, I think, is stocking rates and
seasonal use.

And you can reduce the pressure on riparian areas.

Stu Weiss (55:11):
Well, with riparian zones... fence them off, and
allow occasional grazing.Because sometimes it's good to
muss up the ecosystem a littlebit every once in a while, but
try to avoid having the cowsjust hanging out in the riparian
zones.

And, of course, Lynn told me, the key to all of
this is monitoring,

To monitor, and then adapt. If your monitoring
shows that grazing is doing badstuff... I hate to say bad, I
don't mean bad. If grazing isdoing what you don't want, or
protection is doing what youdon't want, or fire is doing
what you don't want, change itor stop it. You know, that's
what we do.

Okay, to recap, cows are not inherently bad for
landscapes. But poor managementwill definitely create negative
impacts. Good management canmitigate those impacts,
especially if you monitorcarefully and adjust in response
to any issues that arise.

That is the resounding argument that I heard
from the rangelands folks. Andyou know, from what I saw,
Tulare Hill is a good example ofa place where cows might
actually be the best tool forthe job.

So good management is... good.

Amazing, right?

Yeah, I smell a Pulitzer. But there's no denying
that there are places sufferingthe consequences of bad cattle
management. What about all ofthose areas?

Well, in the next episode, I'm going to tell you
exactly what I think about thoseareas. And beyond the areas
where management is clearlypoor, of which there are many,
I'm also not willing to concedethe argument that good
management can sufficientlymitigate away all the negative
impacts we've been discussing.

Adam, you've got me all mixed up here. On the one
hand, we've been talking aboutall the ways that thoughtful
land managers are learning howto use cows to help wildflowers
and birds and amphibians andbutterflies, basically, entire
ecosystems. And then on theother hand, there's land
conversion, and over grazing anderosion, and the climate, and

(57:33):
industrial ag. Plus what soundslike it might be a whole heap of
other issues we're going tolearn about next time.

Are you not feeling particularly at home on
the rangelands?

No! Not at all. I live in a basement apartment
in the city.

That's fair. And you know, I live on an island
covered in Douglas Fir trees. Sohere's what we'll do. Before we
continue, I want to share onepiece of my conversation with
Ashley, that changed the waythat I look at land that has
been obviously damaged bylivestock, the bad management
areas. To be honest, she hasseen a lot more of that kind of

(58:17):
land than either of us have.

So, I guess I look at public land a little
differently than when I lived inSeattle and wanted to come out
and mountain bike on theweekend. Now, if I ride through
a place where yeah, there's somecow patties around. I think,
Gosh, I'm sure this rancher ispretty glad that he or she can
have their cows out here. Iwonder how many head they have.
I wonder what their profitmargins are? I wonder where they
sell their beef. I wonder ifthey're selling directly to

(58:41):
their community, as opposed toriding through and saying, "God,
there's cow shit on my tiresagain, and look at how
overgrazed this is." Now I ask,"how thin are this guy's margins
that he has to have these cowsout here for the maximum amount
of time that he can possiblyhave them on this piece of
public land, because once hetakes them home, he has to buy
hay for them and feed themhimself. And maybe he doesn't

(59:02):
have the money to do that."There are all these extenuating
factors and contexts that Iunderstand a little better now
that make me a little bit moresympathetic to all of the
factors that that go into thedecisions that cattle ranchers
make every day.

What Ashley reminded me of here is that most
ranchers do have the know howand the desire to keep their
lands healthy, so that theirbusinesses can continue to
thrive. It's if nothing else,personal self interest. So if
you're keeping that in mind, youdo start to ask different
questions about why somerangelands are so clearly
hurting.

When you see land getting trashed. That is a
symptom of something that is outof balance, a system that is out
of balance, not just theecosystem, the human system.
That rancher is... is not doingwell. And they're not dopes
right, like they know they needthat grass to grow back. If you
let a cow eat it down to thenubs, that plant dies and then
you have a dust pasture. Like,they know that. So when people

(59:58):
depend on the land to make aliving, they are not
incentivized to trash it. So ifthey're trashing it, there's
probably a pretty sad reason forit, I hate to say it, or a
concerning reason. And you know,that's a question for everyone.

Mendel Skulski (01:00:17):
I don't want to be callous in the face of
suffering, but you know... partof me wants to ask. "So what?"
You know, if they're goingthrough problems, maybe personal
ones or economic ones? Does thatmake it okay for them to pass
along? All of that pain to theland? Does it make it okay for

(01:00:38):
them to be bad stewards ofshared spaces?

Adam Huggins (01:00:43):
No, it doesn't. I think that Ashley's point is
that when we see damageoccurring on rangelands, the
causes are complex and systemicand also sometimes human. So
even as we're making ourcritiques, it's important to

(01:01:03):
resist jumping to conclusions.

Ashley Ahearn (01:01:05):
But that's the hard thing is like, I don't deny
anything that you're saying orthat people see when they go out
on public lands. It's justthere's always more to the
story, right? There's alwaysmore there's always another
angle. I think that's how I livemy life is like that feeling of
like, I'm missing something.What am I missing? What is the
other layer here? Like what arethe other factors that are at
play here? How do I understandthem? How do I help other people
understand them?

Well, Adam, I appreciate you bringing us a
compassionate way to think aboutthese issues. And, you know, a
good place to wrap it up fortoday. But next episode, let's
take the gloves off, shall we?

Oh, we shall. We shall talk until the cows come
home. We shall not be cowed.

Until then. Remember, only you can keep
nitrogen out of the atmosphere.

Yes, and also...

Leland Palmer (01:02:02):
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy
divey.

But cows...

Cows eat grass. And for that at least, they have
our thanks

This episode of Future Ecologies features the
voices of Ashley Ahern, ChristalNiederer, Stuart Weiss, Lynn
Huntsinger, and Clayton Koopman,music by Saltwater Hank,
Thumbug, C. Diab, Meg Iredale,and Sunfish Moon Light, cover

(01:02:48):
art by Ale Silva, and wasproduced by Adam Huggins and me,
Mendel Skulski, with sounddesign help from our intern,
Brennen King.
You can find citations, atranscript of this episode, and
lots more on our website,futureecologies.net. This

(01:03:10):
podcast exists because ofsupport from listeners just like
you. Help us grow, and getaccess to exclusive bonus
episodes, early releases,stickers, patches, our Discord
server and more. Head tofutureecologies.net/join and
choose whatever option worksbest for you. And as always, if

(01:03:32):
you like what we're up to, tellsomebody about it. We really
appreciate it. Till next time,thanks for listening.

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FE5.8 - Home on the Rangelands: The Beef and the Butterflies (Part 2)

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