GRAZING LIVESTOCK BRINGS LUSH BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY TO THE CHIHUAHUAN DESERT IN MEXICO

“Rewilding” is not enough. We need dense herds of domestic animals to restore soil, water cycles, plant communities and insect populations.

HART HAGAN: My guest is Alejandro Carrillo. Alejandro, if you would please introduce yourself and tell us about your ranch. 

ALEJANDRO CARRILLO: Hello, Hart. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share some of our experiences in the Chihuahuan Desert. Our ranch, Las Damas Ranch, or The Ladies, is nested in the largest desert of North America. That desert actually involves three states in the US and four states in Mexico. We have a cattle ranch, cow-calf. We have been working for at least 12 years under regenerative principles. We have seen the benefits of doing so.

HART HAGAN: You have experience turning deserts into grasslands. Alejandro, how do you turn a desert into a grassland? Most people don't know that most of our deserts are man made. They are deserts because humans made them that way. And if humans made them that way then maybe we have the power to turn them back into grasslands so that they're functioning ecosystems. Have you seen some of that take place at Las Damas Ranch. How does that work? 

ALEJANDRO CARRILLO: Yes, Hart. I mean, it’s not only at Las Damas. Many ranchers now are on board with greening the deserts. It seems to be impossible. But you mentioned something very important. What is the ecological historical perspective? 

We have writings in North America from when the Spaniards came. And when the Spaniard  colonizers came, they saw these beautiful, tall grasslands all across the whole North American continent from Mexico, all the way to some parts of Canada. If you see the saddle that they brought to this world, they used to use what they call tapaderos, which cover the stirrup and your boots. 

We always believed that those were to protect your boots from thorns. But they used tapaderas to prevent the boots from getting moisture from the tall grasses that were almost as tall as your saddle. So we start from there and we say we are able to green the desert, thanks to animal impact and long rest periods. 

After hundreds of years, the seed bank is still there.  Nature protects the seed bank by forming a hard pan on top and puts the seed bank in a vault. Las Damas is just one example that we have all across northern Mexico and some parts of the US. 

We work not only to keep ranchers on the land but also to change the habitat. That means that a lot of species that are endangered are thriving nowadays, including species like the desert box turtles, and the golden eagles. So it’s really exciting. 

HART HAGAN: Several issues there I'd like to follow up on. One is the ability of ranchers to create wildlife habitat. Another is the fact that the seeds are there in the seed bank. So, if you get biodiversity, it's partly because you're activating the seeds that are already there in the seed bank. And an important part of that is the animal impact. 

ALEJANDRO CARRILLO: That's right. I mean, remember that we used to have the bison roaming across all of North America. But not only the bison. It was multiple species. We found out that deer, antelope, bison, even Big Horns used to migrate. 

It’s just that nowadays it is so difficult, with all the cities and the fences and the highways. We have created this fragmented ecosystem. It's really very difficult just to rewild and expect great results. We have seen that rewilding in some places like people placing bison or people getting rid of all the cattle in the western us. And that's always very bad. 

But for us, using livestock is really essential to the regeneration of places. It's not that we are replacing livestock with wildlife. It's really the livestock, like cattle or sheep or goats, or even donkeys and horses, they are all--in a controlled way--mimicking nature. They can regenerate the land with all the tools that they have. 

Remember that the livestock have multiple tools like the hooves and the manure and the saliva, and the even the act of breathing can have a positive impact. So with the livestock, once you get back the thriving grasslands, you see an incredible increase of wildlife, like deer coming back, antelope coming back, elk coming back. 

So we are actually using livestock creating the habitat. It’s not seeding, it’s not fire, it’s not planting trees. As you said, Hart, we are creating the conditions for that seed to germinate. 

HART HAGAN: So one thing that, you know, you hear about rewilding, it's like let's make this area wild again, but the problem is that the wild animals alone don't have enough stock density to be able to really mimic nature. Is that correct? 

ALEJANDRO CARRILLO: That is correct Hart. Even in very large areas, let's say 1 million acres, putting in bison, taking down all the fences, it hasn't given the results we're looking for. We have not been able first of all to fix the water cycle. Because once we fix the water cycle, everything starts working. I mean, you have not 10 grasses, but you have  hundreds of grasses, you have hundreds of forbs.