Our Hero

Do you remember the first time you put your hands in dirt and felt the cool dampness of its texture as it moved through your fingers? Do you remember the richness of its smell and your first encounter with the critters that lived in its first few inches at your feet? It is a realm unnoticed by most, but as a little kid, I quickly looked from the magic of the landscape around me down to this micro-world of soil, rocks, debris, and life that was underfoot. I marveled at its complexity and the closer I looked, the more there was to discover. As my parents taught me to experience the planet and everything around me, the mantra was, do no harm, observe the little stuff.

It is the little stuff that can change the world.

As an adult, my respect for life only deepened and I became interested in making a difference. I felt, somehow— through my actions — I could help protect what I love most dear. I became a socially engaged artist and shepherd to a flock of Churro sheep. I focused my work on finding solutions to a really difficult problem. The problem was, “How can we make a positive difference to effect a quickly changing world?”

My concern for what was left deepened too. The planet is unravelling at an alarming rate.

Coming to terms with an uncertain future and confronted by climate events that cannot be predicted, species extinctions that cannot be arrested, and ecosystem failures that cannot be stopped, humanity is tasked with developing solutions to protect the wilderness that remains, and transform the civilizations we construct.

While we are drowning in the age of information, we are starving for wisdom.

But this wisdom has been in front of us the whole time.

For sure we must keep our eyes on all that is happening and work to halt it. But we also need to seize solutions the environment has to offer for abandoning fossil fuels, expanding justly sought renewable energy, sequestering tons of carbon, supporting local communities, and creating a more sustainable food system.

How does a landrace sheep fit into this?

Regional landrace species all over the world have adapted to the environment in which they live. Most of these animals have acclimatized without human intervention where the environment molded them. With desert landrace species in particular, the land that molded them was harsh. Many had little human care and it was survival of the fittest. Their unique adaptions to these extremes can give us so much to combat climate change just by the way they persevered.

And this takes centuries. But what about soil?

It is the few species in the world, unmolested over the centuries, that endured in extreme climates that can help save our soil. Everything about them is beneficial, and we have one right here in the US, the Churro sheep, that is still viable with the pastoralists in the Southwest deserts. From their unique fleece — to how they eat — to the way they move through the environment — it is these very unique traits, not seen in modern livestock, that matter. In fact, when you add it all up, using landraces as solutions could cause enough drawdown in the greenhouse gas emission reductions needed to help limit the world’s temperature rise of 2.7 degrees.

We are clearly overdue to change our perspective, from seeing landrace species like the churro sheep as unviable and too old-school in our modern society, to rightly appreciating them as they truly are.

As a hero.