By Caroline Link
Cattle ranching is the biggest driver of tropical deforestation, but it is also a key livelihood for nearly 1 billion smallholder farmers. A global study by Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU) shows that this tension can be eased by reintroducing trees into pastureland. Planting trees in cattle pastures nearly doubles biodiversity compared to conventional pastures. However, these plantings cannot replace the protection of native forests. The study is published in the journal Ecological Applications.
This study offers the first global quantitative synthesis of silvopastoral systems, which refer to farms that intentionally integrate trees into pastureland. In their meta-analysis of 45 studies from 15 countries and four biogeographic regions, the researchers found that silvopastoral systems host 44% more species and nearly twice as many individual animals as treeless pastures. In terms of species richness, they often approach the diversity levels of nearby native forests.
"We knew that trees made a difference," says Dr. Ricardo Perez-Alvarez of the Institute of Animal Ecology and Systematics at JLU, the study's lead author. "But we were surprised that this difference was so great—and across so many different landscapes." Agroforestry has long been promoted as a tool for nature conservation, though mostly in connection with the cultivation of coffee or cacao.
"We show here that this logic also applies to cattle farming," says Dr. Perez-Alvarez. "Pastureland covers a far larger area than cropland. Converting even a fraction of degraded pastures into silvopastoral systems could yield biodiversity benefits on a scale that is simply hard to match with other agroforestry systems."
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