Boundless Science 2: Wildlife-Friendly Meat: How This Production System Preserves Biodiversity

Florida’s population is growing faster than the rest of the country. Consequently, the US is losing many of its important habitats for wildlife. However, a solution may come from the livestock sector; with something called rangeland systems. This system enable ranches to sustainably raise cattle using Florida’s native vegetation, allowing these places to be profitable while maintaining -sometimes increasing- biodiversity in the region. UFAEC graduate student Cesar sat down with Dr. Hance Ellington, a wildlife scientist, to understand how they work, the benefits for society, and how people can support this type of production.

Dr. Hance Ellington is an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida, department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation. He is a grazinglands wildlife specialist, and wildlife-human interaction expert. Follow his work @uf_rwel on Instagram.

Transcript

Cesar: Thank you very much, Dr. Ellington for, for sitting down and talking with me and Great. Yeah. Thanks for having me. When I was reading your work and everything you do, I came across that the main topic that you're dealing with in this rangeland environment is, is wildlife and wildlife conservation through Um, cattle ranching, and we'll talk a little later about what rangeland means, but right now I wanted to talk about  the utilitarian or the importance of conserving wildlife for humans and the importance of the work that you do.

Dr. Ellington: Yeah. I mean, when I think about the benefits of wildlife, the first thing really is that I think wildlife, and this is. Basically any animals that live outside of, uh, sort of confined human systems, they have an inherent value in and of themselves. Um, but wildlife are also really part of the larger component of a healthy ecosystem.

Um, and healthy ecosystems have a huge amount of benefits. For people and we can dive into like the different benefits that people get from from ecosystems, but ultimately wildlife are a part of a functioning. So ecosystem. And when we have ecosystems with less wildlife diversity or less wildlife abundance, those are ecosystems that aren't functioning to their full potential.

Full potential and they're, uh, not able to provide all of those, those sort of resources and services that they can provide.  

Cesar: And we're always here that we should try to understand or try to  see what the, what, like, what's the most important wildlife to conserve for, but for what I can hear, the, the more that we can conserve, the more native wildlife, the, the bigger or the better there's going to be overall, regardless of who is the most important animal to conserve? 

Dr. Ellington: Yeah, I mean, ecosystems are extremely complex. Animals, plants, uh, and even abiotic features interact in a, a whole bunch of ways, many of which we don't even understand. And so when we remove single species, we, we actually don't know what those impacts would potentially be for a lot of them.

Now, that being said, there are species that we would categorize as, as keystone species, right? So these are species that have, that we know, uh, have an outsized impact on the wider ecosystem or on a whole suite of wildlife species. Gopher tortoise, for example, is one of those keystone species, right? Gopher tortoises create burrows in the ground that they use, but eventually those tortoises move on and create other burrows.

And those burrows that the gopher tortoises created are then used by other wildlife. That can't create their own burrows. So things like snakes and, uh, other, other types of wildlife as well. So, yeah, there's all these sort of connections, uh, interconnections. 

Cesar: Absolutely. And, and I also saw that with, I've seen it with gopher tortoises and with a little owl that lives underground here. Maybe they use gopher tortoise burrows. I forgot the name of it. 

Dr. Ellington: Burrowing Owl. Yeah. 

Cesar: Burrowing Owl. Yeah. Very easy to remember. I forgot it. But also alligators do that when they dig holes in the Everglades and then the fish, the water can use it, et cetera.

It's pretty cool. And that brings us to ecosystem services and the health that these animals, regardless of what, which species it is, there's going to be a, an impact to the ecosystem, then to the service and then to humans. And I want to, and I want to talk about that. But before we talk about that, let's. Let's backtrack a little and talk about rangeland systems and your research is on wildlife conservation in rangeland systems or part of your research.  So if you can talk about what rangeland systems are and then we can go to ecosystem services.  

Dr. Ellington: Yeah, rangeland systems here in Florida occur mostly in the central part of the state, you know, they're not on the coastal, coastal edge.

And historically, these were, these were grasslands. So these were systems dominated by grasses. They have some trees, but not a lot. They're mostly dominated by grass and forbs. Now,  Several hundred years ago, when Europeans first were really starting to move to Florida, a lot of these grassland systems got converted into what we call rangelands now, which basically means we added cows.

We added cows and we've done a few other small changes to some of the vegetation communities that have benefit cattle production. But that's what our rangelands here in Florida are now. They're mostly systems dominated by grasses and forbs that have cattle production on them.  

Cesar: Have those range land systems changed? Is Florida mostly producing through range land systems or has that cattle production changed a little? 

Dr. Ellington: Well, there's certainly other industries that that co occur in the quote unquote, Florida rangelands. Citrus is present certainly. And, but there has been major hydrological changes throughout central Florida that, Has changed these systems in, in many ways and reduce the sort of natural disturbance regime of seasonal flooding.

A  lot of, uh, a lot less wet prairie now, so to speak, but there's still a lot, you know, even though range lands are a little bit different than our historical grasslands in Florida, there's still a lot of wildlife, still a lot of plant diversity, native plant diversity that, uh, That occurs in these systems.

Cesar: That's a very good point. Do these rangeland systems, do they get transformed a little to increase cattle production? Like I know, so the rangeland systems, for what I understand, they use a lot of native species and that's beneficial to Florida and to ecosystems cause they use mostly native plants to support cattle. How is Cattle is supported through native species consumption?

Dr. Ellington: Yeah. I mean, so,  you know, when we think,  and this is, is starting to stretch my expertise, but historically a hundred some odd years ago,  cattle ranching, or even 150 years ago, cattle ranching. cattle ranching cattle were basically open range across Florida and  so large herds were grazing basically on their own. 

They were rounded up and driven to the coast for market. Now the system in Florida is more focused on cow calf operations. So we're, We're raising calves that are then sent to other parts of the country for finishing or for them to, to reach the level at which they can be harvested. And, and with those changes and land ownership and land use that have occurred over the, over that time is, is now there are fences.

There's still very large properties in many cases, but there are fences. There has been some conversion into, into smaller pastures and when. Uh, landowners do convert their land into smaller pastures and making smaller parcels. Then that land often gets planted with some non native grasses that really boost cow production that are, they're non native grasses that grow really, really well in this Florida ecosystem though in the Florida climate.

And they have a high forage content for. For cows, and so those calves can put on more pounds more quickly. So it comes down to things like pounds per acre, or if you think even further in the economic models, dollars per acre for for production, but maintaining these non native grasses, it can be expensive because it requires fertilization.

It requires changes to the to land changes that would. Reduced flooding and all these other things as well. 

Cesar: Yeah, absolutely. This is the way I understand it. Some of the rangeland management systems are used in native and non native, so they can still support native species, but also get good economic benefits with their cattle because at the end.

They're an operation and, and frankly, we want them to stay open because this is a way of keeping patches of Florida natural, but also working. So there's an economic value for them to stay open,  but we need to discuss the challenges. What are these challenges that these systems are facing? 

Dr. Ellington: The biggest sort of long term challenge for, for that is economic pressure, uh, to develop the land and, or convert it into other uses.

And this is driven to a large extent by Florida's ever growing population, right? So we all know Florida's population continues to grow rapidly. And that creates that strong, uh, Development pressure where the land is is cleared for residential and commercial development  and it's that sort of suburban crawl stretching from the urban centers on the coast and from Orlando to a certain extent that creates that economic pressure for certain areas.

to convert their land for that. There's also economic pressure in some  parts of Florida's rangelands for intensive resource extraction industries like phosphorus mining.  And what we know is that both of those systems, urban and suburban areas and mining activities, ultimately provide a lot less ecosystem services and support for wildlife. 

And it basically comes down to these rangelands are really valuable lands. And so on one side, you've got developers wanting to purchase the land and offering millions of dollars in many cases. And you have a cattle production, which is sometimes year to year. And so you need to be able to have some sort of economic incentive to To counteract that really large economic incentive to sell land to developers.

And, and part of that is developing, I think in the future and Florida and many other folks are already working on how to figure this out is policies for payment for ecosystem services, right? So we know all these great benefits we get from rangelands and we're trying to quantify them, like actually put numbers to them and we know they occur, but we're trying to put numbers to them.

And then. If we can put numbers to those values, and that's some of the work that me and some of my colleagues are doing in Florida at the University of Florida at the DeLuca Preserve. If we have those sort of values that we can put in there, then we can, we can take that to policymakers and say, Hey, look, these are the, the value that you get from it. 

We need to find a way that we can pay for these values that, that really everyone are benefiting from. That would put something on the other side of the scale there in terms of financial incentive for. Landowners to keep rangelands as rangelands. We ultimately we got to sort of two things. I think in the long term to, to protect wildlife and to maximize the value that we can get from rangelands.

And that one is maximizing the ecosystem value. And that's done through well, Planned climate, smart, comprehensive land management. But the other side is making the economic burden of maintaining rangelands as rangelands, reducing that economic burden. So putting something on the other side of the scale, when we've got developers wanting to purchase land for multimillion dollars, we have to make, we have to make it a rangelands can still be profitable, not only in.

Uh, for cattle production, but also maybe other small sources of income, like hunting leases or the culture. So the production of honey, but then actual payment for ecosystem services, because these properties do provide a lot of those services.  

Cesar: So I know there's a, there's a movie or a documentary that came up just recently, Path of the Panther.

I don't know if you have been able to see it, but it's a documentary about the Florida wildlife corridor.  And a lot of the corridor is supported by private ranching or private  land  and a lot of people are understanding a little more now that private lands may be beneficial to Conservation as a whole and I was wondering if you knew  That these private lands that we're seeing in the in the movie that were part of that rangeland system because I see that a lot of them They still hurtle their their cattle with horses and they go through swamps and wetlands and and it seems more like Natural Florida, in a sense, with some cows more than just green pastures, perfectly straight and the little black and white hosting cows. 

Dr. Ellington: Yeah. I mean, yeah, that sort of classic image of cattle production land. That's nice green, green grass and black and white splotched cows. I mean, that's, that's almost dairy cattle production, which there is some of that in Florida, but that sort of classic look is, is more big. Um, dairy cattle and occurs a little bit in Florida, but most of what Florida's rangelands are what you described in that doc, seeing in that documentary is  fairly large properties where horses are still used to, to herd the cattle and to bring them in and this sort of that herding operations, those happen just a couple of times a year.

And most of the time the cattle are just.  moving about these large properties, uh, and fending for themselves, so to speak, in terms of finding their own forage and their own pathways to maximize their forage on land that is a mixture of native and non native grasses. But one of, one of the goals of my research and extension program at the University of Florida is to keep rangelands as rangelands, because  rangelands, as they are now, Do provide a lot of wildlife habitat and the alternative in many cases is urbanization development or really intensive resource extraction industries like phosphate mining and those sort of land changes would ultimately cause a huge decrease, not only in wildlife, but also in ecosystem services of that land urbanization.

Urban landscapes, phosphate mining and, and the reclamation lands after phosphate mining,  do not provide the same level of ecosystem services or wildlife that our rangelands can provide. 

Cesar: Uh, talking about that, the, the documentary, like part of it, it's images of camera traps, this like, um,  Motion trigger cameras take pictures when humans are not there and you can see a lot of animals going through this  rangeland systems in the wildlife corridor you we can see there how they support wildlife and Like you said the alternative to this to this farming or to this ranches to be open would be Urbanization or forest mining that's a little more lucrative, but a lot less expensive Less useful to Florida.

And  let, so with that, let's talk about ecosystem services. As I mentioned before, rangelands, those regions that I see in the movie, they were,  they showed a lot of wetlands and a lot of wildlife and water movement. Can we talk a little bit about, um, what ecosystem ecosystem services are and how rangelands support those services? ecosystem services. 

Dr. Ellington: Yeah, ecosystem services really can be broadly classified, categorized into four types. So you, the first type here is provisioning, and this is, might, might be the thing that pops to people's minds first is, so when we're talking about a provisioning service, it's things that can be, uh, extracted from ecosystems.

So food, you know, rangelands are ecosystems. Those ecosystems are supporting cattle production. That's food. They're also supporting wildlife populations that could be hunted. Often for food. So deer, turkey, quail, even then you can also extract water from ecosystems. Uh, right. So you, you're pulling water off of ecosystems that then goes for human consumption, plants that have medicinal benefits, all of those fall into that sort of broad category of services provided by ecosystems, but ecosystems also provide, you know, Other services, regulating services.

So these are sort of basic services that make life possible. So cleaning air, plants, clean air, the ecosystems as a whole, the soil and the plants can filter water and clean a lot of excess nutrients out of water and things like that. That would cause algal blooms and, and, and other things down the line.

Harmful bacteria, all of this can be filtered through ecosystems. And that's a key feature in Florida. Water is super important in Florida, right? But pollinators, so like bees pollinating flowers, that's a regulating service. If flowers aren't pollinated by bees, then the plants don't continue to grow.

Preventing erosion. When you lose a lot of your plant cover, then the soil erodes. And so you lose that, that, that. Really valuable,  really nutrient rich topsoil, much more easily when you don't have a layer of plants covering it, trees and grasses. Cultural services is another category of ecosystem services.

And these are sort of non material benefits that are, Linked with developing and advancing culture of us, of humans, of people. So we gain knowledge from ecosystems, right? So I'm a scientist every time I'm going out and I'm studying wildlife in an ecosystem. I'm gaining knowledge about wildlife that can be both applied or sort of, uh, basic science knowledge.

But also people ecosystems, right? So art, music, even architecture, all of those things are derived. In many cases from what people have observed in nature in ecosystems, um, recreation, right? So recreation is many different things for many different people. It could be a bird watching. It could be hiking. It could be hunting.

It could be even, you know, going on an ATV and through trails. The benefit that you, you get from doing those activities wouldn't be the same without the ecosystem that you're doing that.  activity in. And then the final sort of category is supporting services. And these are even more broader than the regulating services.

And they basically allow earth to sustain life. So you think about like photosynthesis, right? Plants converting water and energy from the sun  into other things that more, Life can use nutrient cycle, water cycle. All of these things are supporting services. 

Cesar: You touched on a couple of things that I feel like our listeners may feel that we're talking to them.

For example, taking hunting and birdwatching, a lot of this rangeland system support a huge variety of wildlife that will in turn support. Each other's hobbies or activities. And I was going to ask with that, are these rangeland systems sometimes open to the public? A lot of 

the land that, that we're talking about here is privately owned.

Dr. Ellington: Not all of it. There are, there are publicly owned lands that have cattle. We see is there that are running cattle on public land as well in Florida that are part of this larger rangeland, uh, system, and there are state parks that have, uh, that have remnants of our, our native grassland systems that are,  I think, fall in the umbrella of a rangeland as well that are certainly public access and open, but in terms of individual private landowners, the there's probably a whole.

The continuum of, of access that these private landowners might allow people on their land or, or they might not, that's probably a, it's obviously up to the individual landowners in terms of what they do and want on their land, but in terms of people coming on it, but a lot of, when I think about the benefits.

You know, we talked about those four sort of categories of ecosystem services and I think you're right that the services that often resonate the most with the people, with people, and this includes ranchers, private landowners, obviously, it is the things There's what's going to impact, what do they see impacting them directly?

And so that's those sort of, uh, extraction, right? Food, water, plants, but also the, the cultural stuff, right? Recreation and things like that. So  ranchers, private landowners in Florida, a lot of these are multi generational families that have owned this land. And so for multi generations, they've owned the land.

They want to keep the land. As they grew up in, you know, in many cases. I mean, I don't want to put words in people's mouths, but I think that's common if you, you do have land or you grew up in, you know, your family home. You want to keep that as your family home and keep it as how you, you, you see and have seen and observed and lived in it for time.

And so they have that sort of cultural connection to the land. 

Cesar: Yeah. And it seems like human nature, cause we can see it. With we want to keep what reminds us of the past the way it is. You want to keep the nice restaurants that you saw that you frequented when you went to college, or you want to keep the, the nice state park that you always hiked the same way.

So I feel like there's  always going to be a impulse to someone who have seen something to keep it the way it is. And in this case, it's. very, very beneficial for them and for everybody else because of these ecosystem services. And regardless of whether you can go in  or not to these places, we should definitely try to support them because they're gonna  Impact the places that we go to.

And even if we go to, we don't go to nature, which we all should. And I have someone else on the podcast that I will talk about kind of connections to nature, which would be very interesting, but  regardless of that, you're going to drink water. You're going to breathe air and that's all going to be clean or dirty, depending on how the ecosystems are and how healthy they are. 

And with that, is there a way that a person like me or whoever's listening can. support this rangeland management practices or this rangeland systems or just wild places in Florida to get these benefits from? 

Dr. Ellington: Yeah. I mean, I think there's sort of, sort of two different levels that I think a lot of people can take action on.

And, and the first one is, I would just recommend that everyone, Get out in, in wild Florida more. Go out to, to your state parks, to your county parks. Go into the, if you live on the coast, go into the interior and visit some of these lands. Experience all the, the natural beauty, I guess, of Florida. Because I think a lot of people, and this is, this, I think this is true of everyone.

It's true of me. Once you experience something, once you see that sort of beauty and you have that sort of positive connection to a landscape or to wildlife to an ecosystem, then, then you, you're more likely to, to begin to love it and to want to support it. And, and you have that sort of connection with the natural environment.

So I would encourage everyone to get out there and get into the natural environment and see, see what it is and see what it's like. And, And, and see if you can love it, but, you know, bigger scale things, right? When we think about how can we support rangeland conservation and some of the challenges associated with that, which we, we, we didn't talk about a lot of the challenges, but, you know, right now in Florida, there's actually in, in many cases, there is bison.

Partisan support for programs that do protect range lands through conservation easements and land protection programs. So these are these are programs that private landowners ranchers can apply for that. Will protect their land in perpetuity or, or long term, maintain these lands as rangelands. And so there is bipartisan support for a lot of those initiatives here in Florida, which is great, but there's still obviously more things we can do.

We're talking about rangelands a lot, but wetlands are, Are linked to rangelands, right? Ecosystems are linked and ecosystems connect are connected. And a lot of the wetland protections at the local level in Florida are threatened by development and things like that, easing of some rules and policies around wetlands protection.

And so if you find yourself loving wild Florida, loving the wetlands and the rangelands, then, then letting your Congress. Members that represent you know the importance of that value, I think can go a little bit towards making more changes at the state level where more of these lands could be protected in the future.

Cesar: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for, for saying all that. And, and I don't think there's anything else to, to add. So very much Dr. Hans Ellington to sit down and talking with us. I appreciate your time and, and the research that you do and all the effort to. understand these systems and to, and also to, to keep them alive and to keep them being part of Florida.

The work that you do is very, very beneficial to Floridians and to the world. And I hope people can appreciate that. And maybe after this episode. 

Dr. Ellington: Yeah. Well, thanks for having me. It was a pleasure talking about Florida's rangelands and the ecosystem services and wildlife and what we can do to help.  

Cesar: Thank you very much. Bye everyone.