Could bison help overcome cow methane?

Around 1.5 billion cattle are currently reared for their meat and milk. These animals require large amounts of food, water, and space to farm and are also responsible for large volumes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions yearly.

While cow-derived products are very tasty, experts are beginning to ask if their benefits outweigh the costs to the environment. The solution, it turns out, might not necessarily mean sacrificing bovine meat and cheese but rather changing our tastes for another member of the family; bison.

Let’s find out how.

The problem with cows

As tasty as beef is, it comes at a large environmental cost. The main issue is that cows, being ruminants, produce large amounts of methane to exist.

Ruminant livestock (including sheep and goats) have special microbes in their rumen that produce methane as a byproduct of fermenting the food that cattle eat. This methane is then primarily belched out as the cow grazes and chews the cud.

Methane, as it turns out, smells iffy and is one of the most potent greenhouse gases on the planet. According to some estimates , methane has more than 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere.

Methane is produced naturally by various parts of the biosphere, but large proportions of it are produced directly or indirectly by human activities. Of these, agriculture and bovine animal husbandry account for around half.

Methane is also bad for the ozone l ayer. When it reaches the upper atmosphere, gaseous methane can react with other gases to create water vapor. This chemical concoction can then break down into other chemicals that deplete the ozone layer over time.

This double-tap impact on the atmosphere and it is important to reduce human activity’s gas production to as low as reasonably possible.

But how much methane are we talking about here? Well, according to a 2014 study , quite a lot.

Cow methane is a serious issue

As the study highlights, several factors affect the production of methane in ruminants, including their level of intake, the type and quality of feeds, energy consumption, animal size, growth rate, level of production, and environmental temperature.

Bearing that in mind, the team found that dairy cows emit methane at rates ranging from 151 to 497 grams per day. Lactating cows produce more methane (354 g/day−1) than dry cows (269 g/day−1) and heifers (223 g/day−1). Mature beef cows emit approximately 240 g/day−1 to 396 g/day−1 of methane, while Suffolk sheep emit 22-25 g/day−1.

Since people’s hunger for beef and milk (and derived dairy products) is unlikely to decline anytime soon, what can be done? Specially designed feeds , food supplements, vaccinations, and other interventions have been proposed, but a more sustainable answer, it turns out, might be bison.

How are bison the answer to cow methane?

There are only two extant species remaining: bison bison (the American bison) and Bison bonasus (the European bison). The American bison population is far more numerous, estimated to be between 300,000 and 500,000, while the European bison population is between 7,000 and 8,000.

Both species have previously been pushed to near extinction due to widespread overhunting. However, conservation efforts are underway in both America and Europe to help stabilize and eventually rescue wild bison numbers.

Bison are also beginning to be farmed en masse as a more sustainable alternative to cow products like meat and milk. While much more dangerous to farm than domesticated cattle, bison offer significant advantages over their more traditional bovine cousins that cannot be sniffed at.

First of all, they are better able to handle low-quality feedstocks than cows and can alter their metabolic rates in response to the seasons. This means they are cheaper and easier to feed in winter months when feedstocks may be low.

Bison meat is also very delicious and might be healthier than traditional beef for the health-conscious due to its lower fat content. From an environmental point of view, however, bison are also more methane-efficient than cattle.

In fact, according to some estimates, bison produce around 72 kg/head of methane. That works out to around 200 g/day compared to cows, roughly two-thirds of cows.

Given the GHG potential of methane, those kinds of savings are not to be sniffed at.

Not just about the burps

But there is more to the benefits of farming bison than just the emissions they save. Wild bison play a vital role in ecosystem preservation and, it seems, provide an important natural carbon capture role in nature.

According to a recent Yale School of the Environment study, bison grazing activities across nearly 19 square miles (50 square kilometers) of grasslands within the Tarcu mountains could potentially capture an additional 2 million tonnes of carbon annually.

To give you an idea, it’s like saying the emissions from approximately 1.88 million typical American cars running on gasoline. This is a significant contribution to the fight against climate change.

“Bison influence grassland and forest ecosystems by grazing grasslands evenly, recycling nutrients to fertilize the soil, dispersing seeds to enrich the ecosystem, and compacting the soil to prevent stored carbon from being released,” study lead Professor Oswald Schmitz told The Guardian .

“Restoring these ecosystems can bring back balance, and ‘rewilded’ bison are some of the climate heroes that can help achieve this,” he added.

Bison grazing habits also help churn the soil, further adding carbon sinking and helping fertilize soil through their dung and urine. All in all, they do a pretty good job for the environment.

Bison offers a more sustainable alternative to cattle farming by producing less methane. They also play a crucial role in maintaining ecosystems and sequestering carbon. As we search for solutions to climate change, these majestic animals could hold an important key to balancing agricultural needs with environmental preservation.

And if they are as tasty as people say, what is there to lose?

And that is your lot for today.