Habitat conversion or more commonly ‘deforestation’ is severely advanced due to cattle ranching, this practise is the number one culprit of deforestation in every Amazon country.

Despite attempts to conserve and protect these pristine habitats - that are so important in terms of ecology and biodiversity - the designation of these sites as ‘protected’ has not been honoured, and local governments have failed in stopping expansion into these areas. This Blog looks into the idea of pristine habitat conservation and is well worth a read.

An example of pristine rainforest - WFN

The World Bank has calculated that approximately 91% of Amazonian deforestation is attributed to agriculture, and has been the “direct driver of roughly 80% of tropical deforestation” (Kissinger et al 2012). 

Pro-velopement 

This report does however, concede that industrial activities bear the main responsibility with regards to global deforestation. But on the other hand highlights that these drivers vary on a regional scale - with cattle ranching being the predominant cause in Latin America.

Latin America is of particular importance as this region experiences the largest net loss of forested areas, converting this land type into pasture sites of cattle - often irrespective of soil, climate and topography (Laurence et al., 2004).

Monga Bay

Furthermore, in Central America forest area has been cut dramatically, by over 40% in the last 40 years (Roebeling et al 2010). Which is seen to be in very close relationship to the rapid increase in pasture land and cattle population over the same time period…

Source - Guardian

Finally, I wanted to discuss a paper by Cohn et al 2014, that I found whilst investigating this topic, that suggests Brazil, who owns approximately 88% of the  total amazonian herd (WWF), may in fact be able to abate GHG emissions by intensifying their ranching practices in order to spare land from deforestation. This would be implemented by taxing cattle on conventional pastures and subsidising farmers who adopted intensive or semi intensive practices. 

Personally, I believe that this is by no means a solution. I think that this only adds to the problem. I have already discussed the problems associated with intensive pastoral farming. If these practices were to be put into place in such close proximity to a pristine and precious environment then it could theoretically do as much damage as deforestation in the first place. I think quasi-solutions like this are farfetched and deserve no acknowledgement as serious suggestions - especially when cutting the desire for meat is such a simple resolution.The paper can be found here and I’d be interested to hear you’re thoughts on it!

But what harm does this deforestation do to the environment? Well, this is a question I intend to answer in a following post. So stay tuned!