How heritage breeds could rescue ranching - Salt Lake Tribune

How heritage breeds could rescue ranching - The Times-Independent

Ranching has a problem.

Photo by Stuart Ruckman and James A. Martin

Specifically, ranching on the Colorado Plateau: the region was identified by the Guardian in 2022 as a hotspot for climate change, meaning its temperatures are rising even faster than those across the U.S. The heat brings with it increased aridity, plant die-offs and accelerating erosion.

“We have a shorter cool season than we used to,” said Matthew Redd, who helms the Dugout Ranch in Indian Creek. He said the area is now warm for three extra months each year, and its plant species are changing as a result.

As a ranch manager, Redd makes his living tending to herds of cattle that graze in Indian Creek and adjacent canyons. He’s also in the midst of an experiment with the ranch’s Canyonlands Research Center that aims to ensure he can keep ranching the land for years to come.

“We’re trying to come up with solutions for agricultural producers to adapt to climate change and keep the natural resource they depend on healthy,” Redd said, “so we can still produce food and protect the integrity of that natural resource.”

Photo by Sophia Fisher

Enter the Criollo cattle: a breed smaller and hardier than their conventional Angus brethren, and possibly more suited to hotter, drier landscapes. They’re known as a “heritage breed,” meaning they predate industrial agriculture and may prove more resilient to the Colorado Plateau’s changing environment.

While promising research has been done on the Criollo (pronounced “cree-yo-yo”) in southern New Mexico, Redd, U.S. Geological Survey Research Ecologist Mike Duniway and a team of scientists have spent the past five years studying the Dugout Ranch’s own herd of Criollo to see if the results could be replicated on the rangelands of southeastern Utah.

“It’s likely under climate change we’re going to need to change the way we do business with livestock on the Colorado Plateau,” Duniway said. “…Are heritage breeds part of that solution?”

So far, Duniway and Redd said, the answer seems to be yes. They detailed their findings on May 19 during the Moab Museum’s celebration of International Heritage Breeds Week, sharing how Criollo cattle seem so far to leave a lighter footprint on the desert landscape.

Photo by Sophia Fisher

Duniway summarized the Criollos’ merits in three buckets: movement, diet and heat tolerance.

“A lot of the damage that might happen from livestock is from concentrated use,” Duniway said. Specifically, conventional cattle breeds such as Angus can’t travel far from water, meaning riparian areas tend to see the greatest degradation from the cows’ heavy hooves, fecal matter and plant-seeking snouts.

But the Criollo, bred in Spain and then left in Mexico for half a millennium, have a tendency to travel farther from water to forage for food. That means their impacts are better dispersed over landscapes.

“They’re very hardy,” Redd said.

Plus, Criollo maintain a broad diet, feasting on shrubs in addition to the grasses favored by European cattle. That’s important because research indicates the Colorado Plateau will become shrubbier as less-adaptable native grasses are killed off by the warmer, drier weather.

Redd concurred that on the ranch he’s seeing “a loss of some of those perennial native grasses” such as Indian ricegrass and needle-and-thread grass, meaning shrubs such as ephedra and shadscale are increasingly defining the landscape.

“The Colorado Plateau is already a shrubby entity, and based on this, it’ll probably get shrubbier,” Duniway said. “So if you have an animal that can eat more shrubs, then you have a little bit more options.”

Finally, Duniway said Criollo cattle are reported to be more heat-tolerant, likely because they’re about half the size of the 1,200-1,400 pound black Angus.

“Those things, if they all work, mean the Criollo could have a lighter impact,” Duniway said.

So far, Duniway and Redd’s team has mainly conducted research by outfitting the Criollo herd with GPS trackers monitoring movement and activity — “like Fitbits,” Duniway joked.

Research is only ramping up, Duniway said, especially given the recent award of a sizable grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Scientists are examining fecal samples to better deduce cattle diets and plan to do more work examining Criollo pregnancy rates and weight gain. Utah State University graduate student Maria Stahl will also parse Criollo movement data, comparing it with measurements of plant and biological soil crust cover.

Duniway and Redd acknowledged, however, that climate adaptivity doesn’t necessarily translate to the meatpacking market. Redd said meatpackers tend to discount Criollo beef because they prize homogeneity in their meat.

“It certainly is a hurdle for large-scale adoption of heritage breeds,” Redd said.

Still, scientists haven’t ignored that hurdle. The New Mexico-based Jornada Research Institute, which pioneered the research on Criollo ranching nearly two decades ago, is examining the economic viability of Criollo beef. Duniway and Redd also agreed the beef could prove profitable through direct marketing to climate-conscious consumers.

Indeed, as Duniway said, “all beef isn’t made the same” — and Criollo cattle are proving that true.