Cattle, conservation, and carbon in the western great plains

Abstract

Angelands have garnered attention for their potential to store carbon (C) and have been included in France's 4 per 1,000 initiative (Minasny et al. 2017), methods for maintaining or increasing C in grassland soils (American Carbon Registry 2013; Verified Carbon Standard 2017), and portfolios of natural climate solutions (Griscom et al. 2017; Fargione et al. 2018). Rangelands are used to graze livestock, and they provide habitat for species, C storage, and other environmental benefits. Rangelands cover nearly half the world's terrestrial surface and store up to 20% of the global soil organic C (Conant 2012). However, rangelands are being converted to other land uses such as cropland (Lark et al. 2015), housing, industry, transportation, and energy production. Approximately 600,000 ha (1.48 × 106 ac) of US rangelands were converted to other uses between 2007 and 2012, and another 360,000 ha (0.89 × 106 ac) between 2012 and 2015 (USDA 2018). Despite the increasing attention being given to soil C, some reports urging soil C management do not mention avoiding conversion (Lal 2019). We suggest that avoiding the loss of rangelands should be given more attention than it currently receives because it offers a well-established approach to retaining soil C along with the other ecosystems services that rangelands provide.