Ranchers(农场主) and environmental advocates haven’t always seen eye to eye, but the differences between the two aren’t as extreme any more, as more and more ranchers have come around to the understanding that taking good care of the land supports both economic stability and environmental health.
“For some, ranching was pursued in the past with an emphasis on raising beef at the expense of everything else,” says Bill Bryan of the Montana—based Rural Landscape Institute in a recent Christian Science Monitor. “As a matter of necessity, the old way of ranching is giving way to a new pattern. Raising animals for the dinner table isn’t an activity that has to be at odds with the environment.”
According to the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund (WWF), grazing (放牧)—when done right—is key to maintaining biological diversity and ecosystem health across the Northern Great Plains, across 183-million-acre expanse of rangelands spanning five US states and two Canadian provinces.
This vast landscape evolved in harmony with large herbivores (食草动物), such as bison and elk, and must be grazed in order to remain healthy, reports WWF, which works with hundreds of ranchers across the region as part of its Sustainable Ranching Initiative. “Without grazing, woody vegetation, such as juniper and cedar creeps in and kills plants that threatened species, such as grassland birds, need to survive.”
Not surprisingly, many of the ranchers that are following in the forebears’ footsteps have been using what we now call “sustainable ranching practices” for decades already. One example is rotational (轮流的) grazing, that is moving cattle herds more frequently to different pastures(牧场), so they don’t overgraze any one particular patch of land.
A newer “best practice” involves depositing a quarter to half inch of cattle wastes on grazed land to kick-start the soil chemistry below while also absorbing significant amounts of methane (沼气)—the most potent greenhouse gas—before it can head for the atmosphere. This technique is now becoming more commonplace as today’s ranchers care about reducing their carbon footprints like no generation before them.
【小题1】In the first two paragraphs, what does the writer imply about the relationship in the past between ranchers and environmentalists?| A．They worked together to reduce the impact of grazing on the environment. |
| B．They didn’t look each other in the eyes when they meet. |
| C．They had great differences between each other. |
| D．They both agreed that raising animals for food benefits the environment. |
| A．be favourable to |
| B．be in disagreement with |
| C．stand a chance with |
| D．be unusual for |
| A．Many ranchers persist in prioritising raising cattle over anything else. |
| B．Grazing done in the right way helps biological diversity and ecosystem. |
| C．“Rotational grazing” has been recently employed to raise animals. |
| D．Grazing contributes to trees competing favourably with plants. |
| A．grazing can be functional in the chemistry field |
| B．methane is another powerful greenhouse gas besides carbon dioxide |
| C．ranchers tend to remove their footprints as they are grazing |
| D．grazing has become more eco-friendly as time goes by |
