Prolego
kiwifarms.net
On paper, any grazing livestock can do what the tranchers did to a piece of land. That depends on how abundant the natural growth is on the land, and then the volume of animals present. A few chickens won't do nearly as much damage as a flock of sheep, who then won't eat as much as a full herd of grazing cattle.
The problem the Tranchers face, fundamentally, is the land they have is extremely marginal. It can grow sparse, hardy plant life, but that coverage won't grow particularly fast, and won't be particularly abundant. The carrying capacity of the land is probably 1-2 cattle. Alpaca's aren't going to eat as much as full on cows, but its not the multiple order of magnitude difference they'd need to actually feed a couple hundred sheep and alpaca's. Even supplemental feed won't prevent the environmental destruction, animals are natural grazers and will just munch on ground cover because its there. Destruction is inevitable at that density of animals.
Just to add some figures, a local reckoned that the carrying capacity of that land was one head of cattle per 30-50 acres. The Tranch is 36 acres so could sustainably support one cow. To convert that into other animals there is a scale of LU or livestock units where a cow equals 1, a sheep 0.15 and an alpaca 0.3. If they got rid of their cow, their land grows enough vegetation to feed SIX sheep or THREE alpacas. On sheep alone they have twice as many as they can feed. They have over FIFTY (yes FIFTY) times the number of alpaca that the land can sustain. That's why it looks like it's been stripped by locusts.
Is anyone keeping track of the alpaca numbers. They said 175 in that Al Jazeera documentary, which is a bit down from the 200 they had at Christmas.



