Cattle do not Replace Bison

Domestic livestock (cattle) cannot replace bison extirpated from North American mountains and plains due to significant differences in diet, grazing, water use, movements, and predator defense. Most varieties of livestock evolved in moist Eurasian woodlands and are poorly adapted to the arid West. They have a much different, and greater impact on native ecosystems than buffalo.

• Cattle use more water, spend more time in riparian areas, and are less mobile than bison. As a result, watersheds and riparian zones are severely degraded by livestock grazing in the West.
• Bison feed in one place for a few days, then move on. This allows vegetation to recover from grazing. Cattle tend to "camp out" in the same location for weeks, sometimes grazing native shrubs, grasses and forbs to bare dirt, causing soil erosion and creating conditions for weed invasion.
• Bison are able to survive on available native forage, while cattle require extra feed to survive drought, degraded rangelands, and northern winters.
• Cattle are poorly adapted to dealing with native predators, being rather slow and unintelligent. Bison retain their wild instincts for avoiding and fending off bears, wolves and other carnivores that they have co-evolved with.
• Wild bison functioned within their ecosystem in ways that livestock do not. Their bodies served as food for predators and were scavenged by ravens, coyotes, and magpies. What was left of their carcasses decomposed and was returned to the soil. Bison were a part of, and contributed to, a great diversity of life. Livestock, on the other hand, represent a large net loss of energy and biomass to western grasslands, as their bodies are removed for human consumption elsewhere.

Information on this page is adapted or quoted from "Myth: Cattle Have Replaced the Bison," in Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West (p. 11).

For more information, see "Where Bison Once Roamed: The Impacts of Cattle and Sheep on Native Herbivores," in Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West .