Cows for Conservation?

October 19, 2014

Clockwise, from upper left: Tudanca, a beautiful old Spanish breed; the shaggy Scottish Highland; Sayaguesa, a fierce-looking old Spanish variety; view of cattle restoring grassland in the Planken
Wambuis Reserve of the Netherlands; herd manager Peter van Geneijgen shows Burney a Sayaguesa calf. (photos by Lida Pigott Burney)

What do cows have to do with conservation? Maybe plenty, according to some Dutch experts. Lida and I have been traveling around Europe in recent weeks, looking at ecological restoration projects, archaeological sites, and cave art. As I described in a newsletter blog last year, it is those daring and innovative Dutch who have led the way globally along the path to re-wilding. At Oostvaardersplassen, near Lelystad, prehistoric-looking Konik horses, red deer (Americans call them elk), and Heck cattle are creating from abandoned land full of invasive plants a savanna-like environment that has attracted more than 100,000 wild geese and rare birds of prey.

Native plants and picturesque open landscapes are thriving here — just as at Makauwahi Cave Reserve, where giant tortoises have done similar restoration work. The Heck cattle, a breed produced through back-crossing rare old breeds and selecting for characteristics resembling the extinct aurochs or wild cattle of Europe, however, are an imperfect copy at best. With our Dutch friend Henri Kerkdijk-Otten, director of the True Nature Foundation and a fellow member of the de-extinction group organized by the Long Now Foundation and the National Geographic Society (to see our TEDx lectures, go to the Rewilding and Ecological Surrogacy Talk and the Restoring Europe’s Wildlife Talk) we traveled to another interesting site near Ede, in east-central Netherlands, the Planken Wambuis Reserve. At this site, beautiful old breeds of cattle, thought to contain some of the precious genes of their extinct wild ancestor, are being used to restore the habitat of increasingly rare native grasses and wildflowers that are being crowded out by encroachment of lands formerly kept open by grazing.

Guided by Peter van Geneijgen , the herd manager, we were able to approach the large, handsome Sayaguesa and Tudanca cattle, Spanish breeds that look far more ferocious than they really are, and the rather comical-looking Scottish Highland breed, with long hair down in its face like a Shetland pony. Peter showed us how the big cows, aided by wild ponies imported from the New Forest area of southern England (near where we are as I write this), are cropping down unwanted plants and fertilizing the desired native grasses and herbs.

This is yet another example of the innovative techniques emerging in large-scale conservation efforts around Europe. Next, we were off to Stonehenge, not just to see the big pile of rocks, but also the restoration efforts there on the Salisbury plain, where fire and sheep are being used to control invasives and favor the rare and beautiful flora of the chalk grasslands. Attempts are afoot to re-introduce the Great Bustard, formerly Britain’s largest land bird. It has survived in a few places on the Continent, but has been extinct in Britain since the 19th century. Re-wilding is breaking out all over!