When drought became a perennial visitor to the Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado in the late 1990s, Steve Wooten remembers telling his family, “We got to do something different.”

Between 1997 and 2003, the Wootens, who have been raising cattle in this arid landscape since 1929, had to sell off cows — a last resort for any rancher. Steve Wooten figures they lost half a million dollars.

“I never want to do that again,” he tells Mongabay. “We felt like one of the things we have to do is create the resilience in the ranch so that we’re not wiped out by drought.”

Around that time, the family “got more serious” about dealing with drought, and it’s helped the ranch keep going. They made plans to allow the recovery of grasses so that they spring back to life when the rains come, Wooten says. And they’ve gone all in on a strategy they’d previously experimented with, one that aims to mimic the role that wild grazers played on the grasslands of North America for millions of years. Proponents say a focus on holistic grazing helps the land recover, provides habitat for other species, and pulls carbon from the atmosphere. To Wooten, the proof is in the resurgent grasses that feed the cattle year after year.

“I wouldn’t venture to say that we’re always in balance, because we are an extractor of that natural resource,” he adds. “But if your cattle are in balance, and you’re matching their forage needs … you’re going to be pretty good at being resilient or regenerative.”

This “regenerative” aspect has been seized on by conservation organizations, the same groups that work to identify, track and tackle the environmental threats to life on Earth.

“Conservationists call it the triple crisis with biodiversity, climate and pandemics,” says Jeremy Radachowsky, Mesoamerica and Western Caribbean director for the Wildlife Conservation Society. “Cattle are sort of at the heart of all of those things.”

Humanity’s taste for beef comes with a massive toll, arguably larger than almost any other sector: Ranching has displaced millions of hectares of tropical forest this century, particularly in the Amazon, where a 2008 study estimates it’s responsible for 80% of deforestation. The loss of forests contributes vast amounts of CO₂ to the atmosphere and huge declines in biodiversity — indeed, livestock production in general has been labeled the largest threat to biodiversity globally. And cattle themselves emit nitrous oxide and methane, greenhouse gases that are more potent trappers of heat than CO₂.

“It blows my mind still that there’s not more attention from conservation organizations on this,” says Chris Jordan, Latin America director for U.S.-based Re:wild. “The animal [agricultural] industry is one of the most heavily subsidized industries on the planet. Companies like [Brazilian meat processor] JBS make massive amounts of money. So why are we using the little biodiversity money that exists to further subsidize these industries?”

Alongside their other work, groups like WWF, The Nature Conservancy and the National Audubon Society have invested in programs to support regenerative ranching, touting it as part of the solution to the problems caused, in part, by beef production.

Regenerative conservation

Proponents of regenerative ranching often argue that grasslands coevolved with the presence of grazing animals, and they continue to rely on grazers.

“Grazing is not only compatible with rangelands where they exist in most of North America. It’s necessary,” says Rob Manes, co-director of TNC’s regenerative grazing strategy. “Most of our grasslands evolved under grazing pressure.”

Indeed, across the western U.S., big-bodied herbivores like bison (Bison bison) churned the soil with their hooves as they moved across the landscape, allowing water and air to reach the root systems of perennial grasses. Their deposits of urine and manure provided key nutrients necessary for plant health. And as they grazed, “on the hoof,” they created the kind of unevenness to ecosystems that supports local biodiversity.

“You get this patchwork to the vegetation and the habitat across the place,” says Chris Wilson, program director of Audubon’s conservation ranching initiative. “So whether you’re a grasshopper sparrow or a Henslow’s sparrow or a horned lark, you can find your type of habitat somewhere.”

Manes notes that “disturbance grazing” also helps to limit the severity of fire, keeping the woody plant species that provide more substantive fuel in check.

The benefits of grazers can also be measured in the grasses themselves, Pablo Modernel, an agronomist at Netherlands-based food company FrieslandCampina, tells Mongabay. Around 60% of his home country of Uruguay still holds native grasslands, he says, where “the diversity of grass species is quite unique” — an indicator of the health of the system.

Those landscapes have evolved with cattle over the past four centuries, since their introduction to the land by the Spaniards, Modernel explains.

Of course, long before domesticated cattle arrived on native grasslands, other grazers filled that role, whether on the Pampas grasslands of South America or the prairies of North America.

“It would be wonderful if bison were still around, and we had 80 million bison on 500 million acres [200 million hectares],” Wilson says. “But today, we’ve got cattle, and cattle can be used in ways that closely mimic bison.”

Accomplishing that goal means engaging ranchers, he adds: “We have got to work with the stewards of those grasslands.”

That work requires applying new processes and adjusting others, because the reality has been that cattle grazing has often been quite different from what occurred in the past.

“Overgrazing was almost the norm in many western [U.S.] states for a very long time,” Wilson says. “That type of grazing is absolutely incompatible.”

Too much grazing on a specific area can make it difficult for grasses to recover, especially in times of drought. It can lead to incursions by invasive plants, including those that pose fire danger. And it diminishes the ability of the soil to hold onto carbon.

“Many times when we see a degraded landscape, those processes are compromised,” says Jeff Goodwin, director of the Center for Grazinglands and Ranch Management at Texas A&M University. He explains that a general approach might be to graze a particular area heavily for a short amount of time, and then move the cattle, even multiple times per day.

“We get more uniform urine and fecal distribution, so it aids in nutrient cycling,” Goodwin says. Rotational grazing also allows pasture time to rest, he adds.

Researchers like Modernel and ranchers like Wooten look to the work of Allan Savory, a Zimbabwean farmer and politician, whose teachings are now codified in educational programs delivered by the Savory Institute. The institute champions “holistic management,” with the aim of replicating natural processes.

For its part, TNC has a goal of improving management of around a third of grazing lands in the U.S. — 240 million acres (about 97 million hectares) — by 2030 as a way to boost grassland habitat, carbon storage, water quality and local economies.

Manes notes that the aim is in line with the goal to have written management plans for 385 million acres (156 million hectares) by 2050 set forth by the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. (Both Manes and Wooten sit on the roundtable’s board of directors.)

The written plans are aimed at increasing ranches’ sustainability, Wooten says, and the plan is to reach an even larger area, where such work might be more difficult, after mid-century.

“It’s easy to get the low-hanging fruit at first,” he adds. “Then you really have to go to work.”

Beef products from ranches that meet Audubon’s certification requirements carry a label indicating the cattle were raised on “bird-friendly lands.”

“It’s really a signal to consumers when they see the certification seal that the beef they’re buying is actually doing good things for birds and grassland ecosystems,” Wilson says. The organization recently certified the Thousand Hills Lifetime Grazed network covering 600,000 acres (243,000 hectares) of land in the U.S., bringing the total rangeland covered by the program to 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares).

Across the spectrum of views on regenerative ranching, nearly everyone agrees that raising cattle on native grasslands makes far more sense than cutting down forest to create pasture.

“There’s no place in this world at this point to be replacing forest with cattle,” Radachowsky says. Yet, it’s still happening — to feed rising demand for beef.

“At a time where we’re facing global existential crises, and we have one culprit, one food production source, that is responsible for a good portion of all of those crises, I think the only practical solution is to look to reduce that problem,” Radachowsky says. “There are tons of alternatives. Basically, anything else — anything else — is better than cattle.”

Perpetuating a problem?

In spite of the claimed benefits that grazers can bring, many remain skeptical about the focus, particularly of conservation organizations, on regenerative grazing, when cattle are at the heart of so many environmental issues.

Demand for beef, and meat in general, is expected to grow considerably by 2050. The U.S. will likely account for more than a fifth of demand in 2025, the largest of any country. But more is apt to come from less-industrialized and middle-income countries in the future as their citizens grow more prosperous.

“The world cannot survive … having the same consumption of beef that the U.S. does,” says Matthew Selinske, a conservation social scientist with the Australia-based environmental consultancy Mosaic Insights.

On the one hand, regenerative grazing could be seen as part of the solution, because it offers a way of producing beef that doesn’t rely on the destruction of forests. Some argue that improvements to the already hyper-efficient U.S. cattle industry are possible, albeit challenging.

But on the other hand, cattle produce significant emissions of both CO₂ and methane, which are actually higher from grass-fed cattle than those raised in feedlots. And feedlots also allow greater production of meat on smaller areas of land. But they’re a nonstarter for most conservation organizations, says Re:wild’s Jordan.

“The most efficient way to raise cows is in feedlots in terms of land use, so why are they not promoting feedlots?” Jordan tells Mongabay. “The answer is that it’s gross, right?”

The idea of cattle spending their short lives in close quarters and sucking mud is a bridge too far, it seems. Plus, it still takes significant areas of land to produce the highly concentrated feed used to fatten those animals as quickly as possible.

Today, however, the choice doesn’t boil down to raising cattle on feedlots versus rangelands (or a path to market combining the two, which many cows take). Instead, one could eat something else.

Though all forms of animal agriculture come with problems, they pale in most comparisons to beef in terms of climate, water and biodiversity impacts, Radachowsky notes. For example, two other popular choices — chicken and pork — have far less ecological impact, though they come with similar welfare concerns.

And a shift away from meat entirely could lead to even greater gains.

“We live right now with a cattle population density on this planet like never before, and it’s the most inefficient way of producing protein for humans,” Radachowsky says. “We’re feeding what should be our food to livestock, and losing most of that nutrition and energy in the process.”

The benefits from a reduction in cattle could lead to what Radachowsky calls a “double-positive effect.”

“There are all the land use impacts, of course, all the carbon dioxide which everybody talks about,” he says. “But then the methane … from a climate perspective is on a different timeline. Basically, we’re in a climate crisis, and methane is much more impactful over the short term.”

Alternative proteins, too, could increasingly share the burden, according to proponents. One goal is to deploy plant cells or fermentation that “looks, cooks and tastes” like meat from animals, says Daniel Gertner, lead economic and industry analyst with the Good Food Institute (GFI), a U.S.-based nonprofit think tank.

“Alternative proteins aren’t about telling consumers what they can’t or shouldn’t eat,” he says. “We need to meet consumers where they are.”

He says alternative protein producers have made “remarkable” progress in matching the taste and price of meat. Companies like Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods and MorningStar Farms have been leaders in the space.

GFI has also been tracking the energy required for alternative proteins, which has been a concern. In a 2023 analysis, researchers found that cultivated meat produced with renewable energy results in lower greenhouse gas emissions than traditional beef or pork production, and is roughly on par with chicken.

Gertner says the growing global demand is a big reason to invest in alternative proteins. As incomes rise, he envisions a world in which traditional meat plays a smaller role in global demand.

“Much like some countries never really had landline phones, maybe we can just go straight to alternative proteins,” he says.

The results could be staggering: Subbing out just 20% of the consumption of “ruminant” meat (which includes goats and sheep, but is dominated by cattle) with alternative proteins could cut deforestation in half by mid-century, according to a 2022 study in the journal Nature.

The future of beef

With what we know about beef and its impacts on our planet, what lies in store for the cow — or rather, humanity’s relationship with it?

“The good thing is almost anything we can do is better, right?” Radachowsky says, referring to the changes necessary to address those impacts.

But for some, the answer lies in shifting cattle production as much as possible to grasslands, not in eliminating it altogether.

“We have to embrace that system and figure out how to make that system compatible with grassland conservation, which it absolutely can be,” Audubon’s Wilson says. “Eliminating a key grazer, where grazing has been an essential process for the entire existence of that grassland ecosystem, is not the solution to the problem.”

Nor is it likely to result in the protection of landscapes, he says. One of the benefits promoted by backers of regenerative ranching is that it keeps land from being turned over to row crops, which don’t have the biodiversity benefits of grasslands and lead to the release of carbon from soils when they’re tilled annually.

“If there were no cattle market and there were no beef market, these places aren’t just going to turn into nature preserves,” Wilson adds.

Around the world, cattle also serve as a means to support the survival of people in some of the world’s harshest environments, from the African Sahel to the steppes of Central Asia.

“A cow is an amazing way to store wealth and to have access to protein,” says Selinske from Mosaic Insights.

Raising cattle is also a livelihood that can embed itself in societal culture, to the point where addressing its attendant problems can seem daunting if not impossible.

The fifth and sixth generations of the Wooten family are living on Beatty Canyon Ranch right now, and Steve Wooten says he believes future generations will continue ranching on Colorado’s plains. At the same time, however, he knows that ranchers must play a role in addressing challenges like climate change.

“It is an issue of our time, whether or not we believe climate is an existential crisis, recognizing that we all are in this together, and that none of us can stand out and say, ‘I’m not going to participate,’” he says.

And the urgency is real, Radachowsky says. “We’re outstripping the carrying capacity in terms of climate, in terms of land use.

“I think it’s something we need to talk about. It might be the only way out for humanity at this point,” he adds. “For me, it just seems ridiculous for people to talk about it as a nonstarter, because it’s tradition or it’s too hard, or people are just too used to it. Our survival depends upon it.”

John Cannon is a staff features writer with Mongabay. Find him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.

This article originally appeared in Mongabay.