WHO will save the endangered Sheko cows of Ethiopia or the Red Masai “hairless” sheep of Kenya? Protecting wild animals is important, but a UN conference in Switzerland this week heard pleas to protect their domesticated cousins, too.
The world devotes far more to protecting wild animals, and even crops, than threatened livestock. There is cash for storing seeds for planting, but not to store semen and eggs for re-implantation.
That must change to protect the futures of poor farmers in the tropics, says Carlos Sere, director of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya. “Breeds are disappearing even before we discover their true value,” he told the meeting.
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The , unveiled at the meeting by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, lists around 6800 breeds of domesticated sheep, goats, cattle, poultry and other farm animals. Two-thirds are in developing countries, most of which have no conservation programmes or animal sperm banks.
On average, one livestock breed is being lost to the world every month, as farmers switch to a handful of super-breeds like egg-laying White Leghorn chickens and the Holstein-Friesian dairy cow – now found in 128 countries. Farmers are giving up drought-resistant and insect-tolerant traditional breeds for the promise of more milk, eggs or meat from imported breeds.
“One livestock breed is being lost to the world every month, as farmers switch to a handful of super-breeds”
Extinction can happen even faster among domesticated animals than in the wild, says Sere. The Red Masai sheep survived on the harsh, drought-prone savannahs of east Africa for hundreds of years, but has been all but wiped out in 15 years as farmers switched to Dorper sheep, first bred in South Africa.
The UN meeting is expected to begin talks on setting global rules to establish national ownership of the genetic heritage of animal breeds – the animal equivalent of rules agreed for crop seeds under the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity. Such ownership will hopefully encourage conservation.
Sere warns that the endangered breeds can’t wait for the lawyers. He wants to start an immediate programme of collecting the semen and eggs of the more endangered breeds. Far from being throwbacks, many have great economic value that is yet to be appreciated, he says. In an era of unpredictable climate, what price the Kuri longhorn cattle of the Sahel in Africa, which are well-adapted to drought and extreme heat, but also excellent swimmers in a flood? Or the tsetse-fly tolerant Sheko and west African N’Dama?
Plant seeds have been moved around the world for thousands of years, often finding commercial success far from home. But the same trick has rarely been tried with indigenous animal breeds from Africa, Asia and South America, says Sere. ILRI plans to change that by matching the characteristics of rare breeds to new environments.
