We’ve blogged before about how goat’s milk is more digestible than cow’s milk, but makes cheese which is lower in beta carotene. Now it turns out that goat’s milk has “higher bioavailability of iron, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium.” Goat’s milk has about 2% of the market. ((In the UK.)) Got (goat’s) milk?
Horse diversity
The wonders of livestock breeding.
Preserving rare breeds at the grassroots level
Because there is only modest interest by most national governments in the preservation of rare farm animal breeds, much of this work is done by non-governmental organizations. ((Contributed by Michael Kubisch.)) These are often operated on shoestring budgets and frequently require some pretty imaginative financial acrobatics to exist. Below is a list of some of these organizations. I realize it is likely to be incomplete — lists like this always are — but I hope it’s at least a fair representation of the types of organizations that are involved in this effort. Some are simply umbrella organizations of breeders of specific breeds, while others have actual facilities that produce animals. Some focus on one breed, while others have a barnyard full of different critters.
I can personally attest to the effectiveness of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, having been a member a while back, but I don’t really want to provide any specific endorsements here. If you think rare breed preservation is a worthwhile endeavor (and who wouldn’t), check out these websites, and if you find an organization that appeals to you, join and support it. If, on the other hand, I have omitted your favorite organization, just post a comment with a link and I will publish a more complete list in the future.
Continue reading “Preserving rare breeds at the grassroots level”
Kutch’s wild ass and Important Plant Areas
I blogged about some recent additions to the list of World Heritage Sites a couple of days back, and now I’ve come across a potential new candidate, which should get in on the strength of its name alone: the Wild Ass Sanctuary in the Rann of Kutch. The wild ass in question is Equus hemionus khur, the Indian wild ass, a subspecies of the onager, the Asiatic wild ass. The khur’s habitat does sound fascinating:
The Rann, the last habitat of the wild ass (Equus hemionus khur) covering an area of 4954 sq. km is one of the most remarkable and unique landscapes of its kind in the world, which is considered as a transitional area between marine and terrestrial ecosystems. During the monsoons, while the entire area gets inundated, as many as 74 elevated plateaus stand out in the area. The sanctuary also houses 253 flowering plant species, 93 species of invertebrates and 33 species of mammals including the Khur sub-species of wild ass.
It would be great to have a protected area which is so strongly focused on the conservation of a wild relative of a domesticated animal. Wish there were more of them on the crop wild relative side. We’ve just heard that the international network of protected areas needs to do a better job of covering crop centres of origin and diversity. Now, Britain is hardly a centre of agrobiodiversity, but it does have a few crop wild relatives, so I wonder whether the British boffins who wrote the WWF report on protected areas and crop wild relatives had any input in selecting the just-announced Important Plant Areas (IPA) of the UK. I expect they tried their best, and the selection criteria do mention crop wild relatives, but it seems as if they were pretty much an afterthought:
The IPA project was conceived in Europe in response to the increasing rate of loss of the irreplaceable wealth of Europe’s wild flowers and habitats through rapid economic development, urbanisation, and habitat destruction. The IPA programme is a means of identifying and protecting the most important sites for wild plant and habitats in Europe. In addition to the protection this will offer to threatened habitats and species (higher, lower plants and fungi), IPAs will also offer protection to a wide range of species including medicinal plants, relatives of crop plants, veteran trees and many common but declining species.