SUSTAINABILITY
10 Things You Need to Know About the
PRIORY GRAZING PROJECT 1 The Priory Grazing project has been initiated as part of the school’s sustainability program. The project is intended to support the school’s efforts at “Healthy Habitats”–for wildlife and people.
2
2019 marks the second year of the grazing project. In 2018, the school hosted 240 goats and cleared two acres of land. This year, we had 800 sheep grazing 12 acres in total.
3 Sheep are grazers; goats are browsers. While goats will eat just about anything that they can
12
reach or climb to–from grass and shrubs, to bark, leaves, and overhead branches–sheep prefer to feast on grass forage. The school’s grassy hillside is a perfect pasture for sheep. The sheep the Priory hosted are called ‘white dorpers’.
4 Humans, grazing animals, and the plants they eat are part of an ancient interdependent ecological relationship. Throughout our evolutionary history, nomadic humans have followed large herds of hooved animals on their annual migrations. These animals, in turn, would follow moving belts of rain–and the plants that grew in their wake. Some humans hunted the animals; others worked to domesticate them.
5 Grazing animals live together in herds–which is good for the landscape. The social aspect of clumping provides these animals protection from predators in wide-open spaces. The high population densities of herding animals cause them to urinate, defecate, and walk on the plants that they eat. These activities promote the proper decomposition processes in the upper layers of soils and help with nutrient recycling.
6 Humans have changed the population sizes and migratory routes of grazing animals. Our modern farms, cities, and roads have all impacted the numbers of hooved grazers on the landscape, as well as the extent of the predators that might hunt these animals. As a result, the ecology and nutrient cycling of modern grasslands is fundamentally different than it has been throughout evolutionary time.
7
Plants can use photosynthetic energy in three different ways: for biomass growth, for reproduction, and for pest protection. Usually, plants are effective at two of these strategies. Grasses don’t grow tall or store lots of carbon as wood, but they do produce large numbers of seeds after a short growing season, and each blade’s serrated edges makes it nearly impossible to digest for most herbivores.
8 We can see adaptations among animals like sheep, goats, cows, and other hoofed grazers that are evolutionary responses to the grass’ reproduction and pest-defense strategies. Chunky molars, leathery tongues, stomachs with multiple cavities, and non-stop chomping show what is needed to make grass work as a food resource. And, in the same way that sheep have evolved to eat blades of grass, they are also able to tolerate sharp and spiny thistle, which grows as an annoying invasive species on the hill.
