Green - An environmentalist community

I started this off as one post, but Lemmy didn't like it so I'm breaking it into two:

PART 1

I want to preface that while I'm not a vegetarian and am ok with eating meat, I'm not fundamentally opposed to the ideas and arguments. My discussion here is to highlight poor journalism and point out very obvious bias. In essence, I'm on you're side for environmentalism but these articles are terrible.

First off, both articles you linked suffer the same problem as the Vox article. All three are biased and agenda led opinion pieces which the authors filled with journal articles which either have problems of their own or sound like they support their argument, but don't if you read their sources.

The first article you linked is from a Website called Sentient Media and their about section clearly states their bias, which isn't inherently bad here. At the beginning they describe regenerative grazing and refute it while linking to various articles about the subject and why it's stupid. Looking into the sources here it quickly becomes apparent that what they are talking about is the snake oil equivalent of environmental agriculture (essentially Regenerative Grazing is the claim that you can reverse climate change and desertification with a specific style of livestock grazing).

Next this article goes into a discussion attacking biodiversity claims, but doesn't really seem to understand how biodiversity works.

But one regenerative grazing notion continues to linger — the idea that cattle ranching is a fundamental part of biodiversity, that grasslands across the world and especially in the U.S. need livestock in order to thrive. The presence of livestock and other domesticated animals trampling across grasslands, the argument goes, enhances biodiversity rather than destroys it.

When it comes to biodiversity there are primary, secondary, and tertiary species. When an environment is upset the primary species are the first to rebound but are generally more fragile in the long term while secondary and tertiary are slower, but hardier. For example, if a forest burns down pine trees are a primary succession species which quickly rebounds in just a few years, but oak trees are a secondary or tertiary species which take longer to grow and with enough time will outlast the pines and eventually crowd them out. By this logic the disturbance of an environment increases biodiversity, because it literally makes the environment more diverse. What is lost is that biodiversity is different between ecosystems, for example, the pine forests on the east coast of the US were historically a high biodiversity location because of frequent hurricanes and fires. The fires in these areas were actually essential for the long leaf pine, because the seeds do not sprout until they are heated by a fire. In this sense, these forests are meant to be regularly destroyed by fires and hurricanes to keep their ecosystem the way it is. In recent times humans have fought to prevent these wildfires which has hurt the long leaf pine forests.

Another example here would be an old growth oak forest which hasn't seen flame or axe for 2000 years. Introducing biodiversity here would utterly destroy the historic ecosystem.

The article later goes on to talk about this topic themselves and how some ecosystems need disturbances for maintaining their biodiversity, but they get a bit... ¿Strange? with it:

The right balance of biodiversity helps an ecosystem regulate itself — keeping itself in balance even when exposed to natural disturbances like windstorms and fires, or droughts and insect infestations. Functioning biodiverse ecosystems can even thrive in the face of some natural disturbances, like periodic fires. Many plant species depend on these fires for reproduction and growth.

Biodiversity isn't magical, it's a variable slider dependent on whatever desired ecosystem outcome is. If the desired outcome is an 1900 version of the Great Plains then reduced livestock is a great way to do that. If the desired outcome is a 1600 version of the Great Plains it definitely isn't. Just like reintroducing wolves to Yellow Stone, it's all about what the desired outcome is.

The article also brings up a study further refuting the regenerative grazing which discusses the grazing and livestock from the point of climate change, not from keeping the ecosystem healthy. This article, "Livestock Use on Public Lands in the Western USA Exacerbates Climate Change: Implications for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation," makes no statement about maintaining the ecosystem with the bison in mind and is singularly focused on emissions. So the argument which uses this article is at odds with the one they used earlier for biodiversity. One could argue that if the purpose is the eliminate emissions then you also wouldn't want 60 million free ranging bison in this area either.

Later the article talks about the difference between Bison and Cows as you quoted. The article they link is actually really good, but it's hard to find a full version of it (paywalls). I read what I could of the conclusion (part of it was clipped off). The take away from what I could read and what others said about this article is that Bison are definitely different and arguably better, but the downsides of cattle grazing are more to do with how cattle grazing is done, not the grazing itself. If cattle were forced to move around the pasture more, forced to be away from water sources and trees (which they seem to prefer unlike bison), and if you forced them to move along more, then as the original article says:

If increased biological diversity facilitated by vegetation heterogeneity is an objective (Fuhlendorf et al. 2006) and domestic livestock are used as the dominant grazer, then the cumulative result of grazing alterations across many pasture units may reduce the impact of increased grazing periods and localized use areas by livestock, thus increasing biological diversity at a landscape scale (Fuhlendorf and Engle 2001).

This journalist opinion piece (https://modernfarmer.com/2016/09/bison-vs-cattle-environment/) seems to reference the article (but their links are dead so I couldn't confirm), but I liked their point:

So are bison better for the environment? As it stands, often, yes – but that’s less an indictment of ranching cattle than an indictment of the way the cattle industry works.