How Is This Ancient Cattle Breed Fighting Wildfires in Portugal?

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2 • 639 Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2024

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Portugal is one of the most vulnerable countries in Europe to climate change. Straddling the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic regions, it’s part of a climate change hot spot. Some of the biggest fuels are shrubs. One study found that shrubland covers 1.6 million hectares in Portugal—about 18 percent of the nation’s land area. And those shrubs are gaining ground. That’s because, for decades, people have been moving out of rural communities such as the one Tommy Ferreira lives in. Most leave to pursue better-paying jobs in the cities or in wealthier European Union countries. Portugal has lost 30 percent of its rural population since 1960. The same trend is occurring across the Mediterranean region. Abandoning these farmlands is increasing wildfire risk, according to an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development report released last spring. When people who work the land leave it, grazing pastures and farm fields become thick with fuels. But these ancient Maronesa cattle can help solve both of these modern-day problems. It was a solution hiding in plain sight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.
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0:32.4	And it was so fast, the fire came from the top of the mountain to the village in 15 minutes.
0:40.3	2016 was a bad year for cattle producer Tommy Ferreira.
0:44.3	A severe wildfire tore across his pasture outside the tiny village of Soto in northern Portugal.
0:50.3	He lost a cow and much of his forage went up in smoke. The soil was so deeply scorched that nothing would grow.
0:58.0	But I did have to spend way more because I had nowhere for the cows to graze.
1:04.0	So they would feed just on hay for quite a while.
1:07.0	But today, his cattle have become an unlikely firefighting tool.
1:14.4	I'm April Reese, and you're listening to Science Quickly.
1:24.0	He and a dozen other producers raise a primitive breed called Maraniza.
1:28.9	Maraniza cattle are native to this part of Portugal. They've got big, curved horns topped with a
1:31.5	toupee-like clump of brown hair.
1:34.3	They're chocolate brown all over,
1:36.1	except for their milky white snouts.
1:40.1	They look kind of like the extinct orrochs,
1:42.9	the wild ancestor of domestic cattle.
1:46.1	Shepherds have raised Maraniza cattle here for centuries. Watching them graze among the olive
1:51.1	and oak trees, you can almost pretend you're back in the Middle Ages when members of Portugal's
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