GRAZING ANIMALS
1. Key Points:
- Grazing animals have a significant impact on the stability of soil carbon in grazing ecosystems.
- Researchers observed that experimentally removing grazing animals from the ecosystem resulted in higher fluctuations in soil carbon.
2. Research:
The researchers, with the support of the Himachal Pradesh State Government, local authorities & the people of village Spiti, established some fenced plots where grazing animals were excluded & adjacent plots where animals like Yak & ibex grazed.
The soil was examined year after year, over the decade following 2005, when the study began.
3. Grazers & stability:
- The soil carbon in the fenced plots fluctuated 30-40% more than that in the plots where animals were allowed to graze.
- Grazing ecosystems like grasslands, steppes savannahs, and shrublands cover about 10% of India & 40% of the world.
- Historically, these ecosystems support nearly all megafauna around the world & are home to reptiles, birds, and amphbians.
- Such drylands were threatened by alternate land use.
- Drylands seem to lack a legitimate standing in our policy due to the unfortunate wasteland tag which originated during the colonial past that was enamoured by forests.
4. Substitute Populations:
- Grazing ecosystems store carbon in the soil & decarbonise the atmosphere. Large mammals are crucial for this.
- Unfortunately, wild mammals are confined to a few parks, and reserves.
- Wildlife has long been replaced by domestic livestock.
- The questions that come up are: while this replacement is inevitable for livelihoods & food security, are livestock ecological substitutes for the wild mammals they have displaced?
- These aspects are missing in the current policy on livestock and all the answers are not found yet.
- The land which has wildlife & restore degraded lands are to be protected.
Source: Hindu