They may look like ordinary ponies grazing in a field, but these little horses are actually the first line of defense for a rare ecosystem and are changing the way conservationists see the role of farm animals in the wild.
On the outskirts of Borris Heath, nestled between the rivers Skjern and Omme in Denmark, Shetland and Exmoor ponies are rented out alongside cattle to graze the nearby forest.
Their role is to prevent the forest from encroaching on the heather, a unique ecosystem of 4,743 hectares used by the Danish army as a shooting range.
Nature interpreter Søren Frederiksen helps manage the relationship between farmers and the ecosystem.
“If you go back maybe 200 years, most of the western part of Jutland was pretty much everywhere,” he said.
“They founded the shooting range in 1903 because they were losing the heather, going to agriculture, farming”.
Conservationist Søren Frederiksen works with farmers to protect natural heathers in Denmark. (ABC Rural: Kallee Buchanan)
Almost 120 years later, rather than threatening the culturally significant landscape, farmers and their grazing livestock are part of the reason it’s thriving.
“If you don’t manage it, it’s going to become forest, so you have to cut it, graze it or burn it,” Frederiksen said.
“They [the animals] they keep it open to the light, and attract insects with their droppings, they help to achieve better biodiversity in those areas where they graze.
“I think what we’re doing now is better than doing nothing.”
Farmer Søren Christensen rents out his ponies and cattle as nature managers, creating another source of income. (Provided by: Soren Frederiksen)
Farmer Søren Christensen is the seventh generation of his family to farm in the area, but a lot has changed since they started in 1788.
The valley was drained and the river turned into a canal in the 1960s, and now the Danish government intends to flood it again, reclaiming some 100,000 hectares of farmland to avoid carbon emissions.
Christensen will lose about 50 hectares, but the conservation work his animals do will provide an alternative income, earning about 100 euros ($147) for every hectare of public land they graze.
“Danish farmers occupy large areas of land where there is little biodiversity, so to pay for this I have the horses to create biodiversity in other areas,” he said.
“We are very good at producing food, but it is also important, and increasingly important, that we are also able to preserve nature.”
A local university is tracking the animals to confirm the results of the intervention, work that challenges both conservationists and farmers to change their thinking about how agriculture and nature intersect.
By eating plants from the surrounding forest, cattle allow light to penetrate the heather and prevent overgrowth. (Provided by: Soren Frederiksen)
Carbon capture capacity of livestock
Across the Atlantic, at Buck Island Ranch in Florida, cowboys and scientists have been working together since the late 1980s.
At the headwaters of the Everglades near Lake Placid, the 4,000+ acre ranch is also a natural laboratory for the Archbold Research Alliance.
An ongoing experimental study of 40 wetlands there shows moderate intentional livestock grazing is needed to preserve them.
Vaughn Holder is director of the ruminant research group at Alltech, an animal nutrition company that has a research alliance with Archbold.
He said analysis of production data on carbon emissions from the 3,000-head operation found that grazing land produced more than 10,000 tonnes of carbon a year, 64% of cattle, but the grazing pastures sequestered 17,813 tons.
“That’s taking a ton of carbon out of the environment … that’s net positive sequestration,” he said.
“It’s very important to look at the ecosystem and understand it from this point of view: the ecosystem is producing the meat.”
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Interestingly, Dr Holder said the work showed that if ruminants (grazing animals such as sheep, goats and cows) were removed, the system lost biodiversity and sequestered less carbon.
Measuring biological carbon is a still-evolving science, making it difficult to assess industry’s broader contribution to both emissions and mitigations.
“If there are no ruminants, suddenly without livestock you’re producing both methane and net carbon emissions from a natural ecosystem,” he said.
“These are the really important things that we need to understand as we move forward in the science of trying to manipulate sequestration to have important environmental outcomes.”
In its sixth synthesis report on climate change, due in April 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that the managed land sector, including agriculture and forestry, represented among the 13 and 21 percent of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. that is, those attributed to human activity, between 2010 and 2019.
“At the same time, natural and managed terrestrial ecosystems were a carbon sink, absorbing around a third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions,” the report says.
He said farming systems that could be considered regenerative or conservation agriculture likely contributed to mitigation, but to what extent was unclear due to a lack of consistency in defining and studying them.
Farmers are caretakers of the land
In Queensland’s North Burnett, Nadia and Robert Campbell raise their herd of Brangus among eucalyptus trees at the headwaters of the Burnett River in an extinct volcanic crater that has been part of the Campbell family since the 1860s.
Goondicum Station has a unique geology and ecosystem that Robert’s parents, Bruce and Roseanne Campbell, began actively preserving in the 1960s, returning large areas of the property to native forest and turning it into a business of sustainable beef.
Nadia and Robert Campbell have been nominated for a national Landcare award for their work in environmental protection. (ABC Rural: Kallee Buchanan)
They have been recognized as leaders in land management practice, being named a state finalist in the Australian Government’s Landcare Farming Award, to be announced in August 2022.
“We just walked in here quietly doing our thing regenerating the country and somebody recognized us and nominated us,” said Robert Campbell.
“We haven’t done it right all the time, but we’re doing it and it’s improved the country a lot.”
Campbell said there was a growing interest from other farmers to work alongside nature, not only for the environmental benefit, but also for the economic benefit.
“We’re doing field days and education days so people can come and see what we’re doing and maybe adjust their properties to get it so they can produce more grass, beef and trees,” he said.
Back in Denmark, Frederiksen said grazing had always been a part of the landscape, the challenge now was to do it in a way that worked in harmony with nature and cost-effectively.
“I think maybe it’s a new production for agriculture, to protect nature,” he said.
“I think some farmers will see a business opportunity and a future in this, I think that’s a good thing.”