We can no longer treat soil like dirt. Instead, we must take a soil-first approach to regenerate landscapes, restore natural cycles, and bring vitality back to ecosystems.
The Churro sheep can help us with this.
Opportunity
Exploring the potential of locally adapted breeds.
Restoring Balance
Churro sheep can help restore balance.
Over millenium, people have evolved with their agriculture a strategic and ecologically intelligent use of animals and plants for food. These locally adapted breeds of livestock and plants, referred to as landraces, are important due to their high potential to adapt to specific environmental conditions and the large source of genetic variability that they provide. But the very existence of landraces around the world are threatened by the industrialization of agriculture worldwide.
What we generally find is that higher biodiversity supports higher ecosystem functioning
There needs to be a conversation about not only understanding how the climate crisis is going to alter plant communities and animal behavior, but also how that is going to change how we practice restoration. We need to think about how current practices need to adapt and be adjusted to account for a quickly drying climate or more extreme climate events.
The opportunity is in protecting soil with landrace species like the Churro Sheep
Arid grasslands, which cover most of the western US and the states of Chihuahua and Durango in Mexico (including the Churro sheep’s homeland — parts of the Colorado and Jornado Plateau and the Rio Grande basin which includes New Mexico) support large diverse ecosystems. They can sequester a lot of carbon. Those working to protect rangelands are now searching for novel approaches to keep these grasslands healthy and diverse.
In arid landscapes around the world, there are just a few landraces viable in their original habitat. It is these few species, like the Churro sheep, that have answers to our drying and heating climate. The Churro sheep is one of a handful of landraces developed in the US still viable as a regional landrace species. It is these very primitive animals, that enable populations world-wide to be versatile, strategic, and ecologically intelligent when it comes to protecting the biodiversity where they live.
It is interesting to note the Churros’ grazing habits are more like a native ungulate (deer and antelope), always on the move and consuming a myriad of different plants. They are moving constantly grazing and never stay in one spot for long. Their hooves are small and impact the soil, biocrust, and native plants far less than non-native cattle, goats and sheep.
Their grazing habits and lightness on their feet is why we consider the Churro to be the right animal for drying and/or arid landscapes.
It’s all in the soil.
Rangelands are a diverse ecosystem made up of a vast assortment of flora and fauna which primitive species like the Churro sheep utilize in their diets. To support the vast array of plants, the soil in dryland habitats have a layer of crypto-organic soil called Biocrusts. They are dominated by cyanobacteria that binds soil particles, reduces erosion, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, and improves soil fertility. In drought-prone environments, monitoring the presence and integrity of biocrusts helps us understand landscape usage. Biocrusts that protect and enrich the soil will support long-term ecosystem health and economic profitability of livestock production in rangelands. Without these crusts of beneficial organisms, the rangeland plants cannot survive.
Soil as a carbon sink
Soil is a significant carbon sink - globally, approximately 75% of terrestrial carbon has been estimated to be stored in soil, which is up to is three times more than the amount stored in living plants and animals.
If the soil is covered with either humus (organic matter) or Biocrust, it absorbs the carbon from the atmosphere. At the same time, unhealthy soil, which is damaged by overuse and exposed, is a source of emissions of both carbon dioxide and methane. That means that improving the health of soil can play a major role in increasing carbon sequestration and addressing atmospheric carbon.
Biocrusts are fragile
As soils become more arid, they tend to be less able to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, and thus will contribute to climate change. Most domestic livestock used in modern agricultural, have large hooves and a slow way of maneuvering through the environment that causes the break-up of biocrust soils. It takes 10 years for the biocrust to regenerate after disturbance. This disturbance releases CO2 into the environment and destroys the symbiotic relationship biocrusts have with the range plants.
Whether you want to fix or reverse climate change, or do carbon sequestration, or limit the temperatures rising in the world, or resolve water scarcity, the connecting need is the need to fix the soil.
