The Ability to Sustain
Futureproofing through design
Introducing the Indigenous landrace Churro sheep.
How can a sheep help us survive a drying and heating world?
What is an Indigenous Landrace Churro Sheep?
Indigenous landrace animal breeds are rare and unique because they are a species that is native to a particular region or ecosystem and is a result of local natural evolution. They are extremely valuable for millions of small-scale farmers worldwide. They often preform much better than “improved” breeds, because of their unique adaptations to specific natural and social environments. They can withstand climatic extremes where other domestic-type livestock perish. These unique adaptions make indigenous landraces important genetic resources for climate resilience.
Churro sheep are an indigenous desert landrace for the US that show impressive genetic diversity and adaptive traits that used to be common before the 1800s. These adaptions allowed them to survive the exceedingly harsh desert environment and extreme climate fluxuations worldwide. Presently, because of pressures to modernize the sheep over a 150 year period, these traits are rare.
Why it matters…
Like most Indigenous landraces around the world, the Churro sheep have long been subject to various pressures: Grazing land has been reduced, and traditional cultural peoples have been forced to give up their traditional flocks, often violently. Recurring droughts, worsened by climate change, and the growing numbers of young people moving to large urban areas have all compounded the problem. Since the middle 1850s, United States agricultural policy has promoted “improvement” and crosses between the landrace Churro and other imported sheep breeds to fit into the modern perception of softer wool
without kemp and a larger carcass for meat production. This ‘modernization’ has continued into the present day, which makes it increasingly hard to find purebred landrace Churro sheep. Saving the primitive genetics of this indigenous sheep breed is essential for the preservation of a genetic resource and a resilient animal, able to survive disease and a rapidly changing climate. But most importantly, these primitive landrace breeds, which still retain their original genetics, have answers to our drying and heating climate.
Rio Milagro Foundation plans to find out how primitive genetics of desert landraces like the churro sheep benefit the landscape that is becoming hotter and drier. Their unique adaptions over five centuries is key to our understanding.
Rio Milagro Foundation is working to give value back to a desert indigenous landrace sheep that protects the environment and supports the cultural diversity of local communities. These special sheep, called Churro, show impressive adaptive traits that used to be common before the 1800s and allowed them to survive the exceedingly harsh desert environment. Now, these traits are rare. We are dedicated to the protection of desert landrace species, especially the indigenous Churro sheep, and to the celebration of the joy and mysteries of how they can help us.
Who We Are.
Rio Milagro Foundation is a women-led 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to studying and preserving biodiversity by advancing the welfare of the Indigenous Landrace Churro sheep. We plan to expand their positive impact on ecosystems and enhance the economics of communities that nurture them. By understanding how nature can help us, we want to inspire people and mobilize resources that support and sustain this desert landrace sheep for the next generations.
Our Mission
Our objectives are:
Establish and protect the genetic profile of the primitive desert Churro sheep.
Research and demonstrate the Churro sheep's beneficial effects on drought-prone ecosystems.
Produce economic incentives using their unique adaptations to expand churro flocks.
Educational outreach on how landrace species can help with climate change and resilience.
It’s time to get back to the way adapted regional species can benefit us.
This is the way we will do it...
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Understand the Problem
According to a report conducted by NatureServe in 2023 studying biodiversity in the US, around one-third of plants and animals in the nation are at risk of extinction, and 41 percent of ecosystems are at risk of “wide-range collapse.” Threats from reduction in biodiversity are present within many ecosystems.
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See an Opportunity
With climate change as an existential threat, the benefits of landrace species (animal landraces are historic local breeds often characterized by low production levels, so that their economic sustainability is often threatened and the risk of extinction is high) remain untapped. Indigenous landraces everywhere, i.e. plants and animals autochthonous to a specific region, have the ability to assist us in conserving the soil we stand on, the air we breath and the cultural history of age old people.
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Find the Solution
Our foundation is creating a women-lead movement to build knowledge that generates sustainable, climate resistant infrastructures. Landraces are valuable for what they are, not for what we can make them into. They are important gene banks worldwide because they are naturally adapted to extremes like drought and heat. Climate change is proving them to be the salvation of our food supply and protecting ecosystems.
The Churro Sheep is a desert landrace and a Cultural keystone species originating in the Southwest US and Mexico and is essential to our efforts. They have deep genetic diversity that is the wellspring of survival strategies for the future.
Delivering economic viability to communities
Local entities - including New Mexico Acequia communities, tribes, and other rural communities, are primed to benefit from our incentives.
The investment in the Churros and climate change will deliver resources, through innovative approaches to the Churro’s worth, to Hispanic, anglo, and indigenous communities. This creates the expansion and geographic distribution of the Churro economically attractive, locally and internationally, and improves the lives of the shepherds that tend to them.
Through the TrueChurro™ initiative, the Rio Milagro Foundation gives back to the shepherds that protect the primitive flocks.
