Are a cow’s gassy farts and belches equal to a bison’s emissions? Western Justice, a nonprofit that says it’s dedicated to "empowering the future of the Western lifestyle," believes that comparison stinks of truth.
Western Justice claims that the 31.7 million beef and 9.4 million dairy cattle in the United States today are comparable to the “60 million buffalo” living in the West during the 1800s.
The group uses these numbers as a challenge for “leftists" and "the environmental extremist movement that wants to dismantle agriculture" to explain away.
“Prove that cow farts are more destructive to the environment than buffalo farts,” the group’s Sunday post reads, “or admit that cow farts really aren’t something we should be worried about.”
Several scientists and peer-reviewed research have cited methane emissions from domestic cattle as a source of higher carbon emissions contributing to climate change. At the same time, bison have been proposed as a solution to reduce these emissions, letting them return to their historical range as natural carbon sequesters.
Although people like to focus on the “farts” of as expelling methane and causing climate change, their belches actually produce much more.
Since cows and bison belch and fart, Western Justice proposes there is no difference between their farts. Many others believe that comparison is full of hot air.
“You have to be cautious about how those numbers were calculated,” said ecologist, author and bison advocate George Wuerthner. “Cows and bison aren’t the same, and the concerns of methane emissions from cattle goes beyond the West.”
The Numbers
First of all, the graphic shared by Western Justice isn’t new. It was first posted in July 2023 and has been circulating ever since. But if taken at face value, how does it hold up?
According to a report from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), there were 87.2 million head of cattle in the U.S. as of January 2024. That was the lowest number of U.S. cattle since 2014 and the nation’s smallest inventory since 1951.
But unless the nation’s cattle numbers dropped 47% in the last year, there’s a significant difference between the 87.2 million cattle counted and the 41.1 claimed by Western Justice.
However, there’s also a potential discrepancy in the number of bison during the 1800s. While it would be impossible to determine how many bison roamed the plains in the 19th century, contemporary accounts were prone to exaggerate.
“The estimates of how many bison existed on the plains are based on almost absurd assumptions,” Wuerthner said. “General Grenville Dodge saw bison passing in front of him for two or three days and only saw a portion of the bison on the plains. So, he estimated that there were around 100 million out there.”
Bison were undoubtedly much more plentiful in the 1800s than today but determining the exact population size is impossible. Wuerthner said the 60 million quoted by Western Justice was “pulled out of thin air.”
While cattle numbers are relatively constant because of year-round feeding and veterinary care, wild bison numbers have been in constant flux because of environmental factors, diseases, and stress placed on populations by hunting by indigenous tribes and European settlers.
“Estimating how many bison existed is really problematic,” Wuerthner said.
The Most Methane
All ruminants produce significant quantities of methane through flatulence and food fermentation in their digestive tracts. Methane is much better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide and can linger in the atmosphere for up to 12 years.
Cattle are the top source of agricultural greenhouse gases. According to the Department of Animal Science at the University of California-Davis, an individual cow can emit around 220 pounds of methane every year.
There have been several studies on cattle emissions, but bison emissions have not been as extensively researched. Studies that have been undertaken have produced intriguing results.
A 2021 paper published in the National Library of Medicine determined that emissions from bison, elk, and deer in pre-European settlement America were about 86% of emissions from modern-day farmed ruminants. That study assumed a bison population size of 50 million.
Another research paper published in 2021 determined that a wild bison might produce less than 70 pounds of methane each year. The rationale was that the diet of a wild bison would produce less gas than the diet of domestic cattle.
Applying these approximate methane emissions to the numbers in Western Justice’s post, 60 million bison would produce around 4.2 billion tons of methane each year. In contrast, 41.1 million cattle would produce over 9 billion tons of methane annually.
Even with the dubious numbers shared by Western Justice, a higher wild bison population would still emit almost half as much methane as a smaller domestic cattle population.
Quantity Or Quality?
If cattle emissions are as urgent as many suggest, it’s not one that Wyoming ranchers are being forced to confront. Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, said it’s not a pressing issue in the Cowboy State.
“There's a lot of rhetoric about it, but I haven't seen too much direct pressure to address it,” he said. “There’s a lot of other things higher on the worry list than that.”
Scientists advocate for ranchers to change cattle diets and possibly breed more methane-efficient cattle to reduce emissions. New Zealand even implemented a "fart tax" on agricultural producers to offset methane emissions, although it discarded the levy in 2024.
Most ranchers are skeptical about these suggestions, primarily because of how dietary changes and less gaseous cattle could potentially impact beef quality.
“The ultimate goal of selective breeding in cattle is the highest-quality meat,” Brett Moline, director of Public and Governmental Affairs for the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, told Cowboy State Daily. “If cattle are selectively bred for their lower methane outputs, that could sacrifice the quality of the product. You could get a cow with zero emissions, but what good is it doing if the meat product is worthless?”
Magagna acknowledged that altering cattle diets could reduce emissions but wasn’t sure how practical those dietary changes would be for Wyoming’s cattle industry.
“Most cattle out here are open range,” he said. “I think they have identified certain things you could feed cattle in feedlots to reduce methane emissions, but I don’t think that would make a difference in Wyoming.”
International Emissions
Another consideration in the debate of cattle farts versus bison farts is that it isn’t confined to North America. Cattle ranching is a global industry, something Wuerthner believes needs to be considered when examining methane emissions.
“Tropical rainforests in Brazil have been chopped down to make more pastureland for cattle or crops like soybeans used to feed cattle,” he said. “Rainforests sequester a lot of carbon, and if you add that loss to global emissions, some estimates say livestock production is responsible for as much as 50% of global carbon emissions.”
Wuerthner believes that focusing on the number of bison that once existed in North America isn’t as consequential as the hundreds of millions of cattle that exist globally today. That’s why playing number games isn’t conducive to finding solutions.
“You have to be cautious about what materials and numbers you use to calculate these things,” he said.
Ongoing Experiments
Many organizations are pursuing bison reintroduction as a solution to climate change. Wyoming could be the perfect laboratory to test their carbon storage prowess.
Research published by a team of scientists from Yale University observed a herd of 170 European bison reintroduced to the Tarcu mountains in Romania. They concluded that all the methane emitted from the bison could be offset by the carbon dioxide captured and stored in the soil by the bison herd.
According to that research, European bison grazing on 30 square miles of grasslands in Romania could store up to 54,000 tons of carbon a year. That's equal to the annual carbon emissions of 43,000 vehicles in the United States.
Meanwhile, Colossal Biosciences, a Texas-based biotechnology company, announced its intent to “resurrect” the lost genetic biodiversity of American bison to save the species from extinction. The company also formed an Indigenous Council so the genetically resurrected bison could return to their historical ranges on reservations and resume their lost role in ecosystems.
"There are papers published about keystone species with some of the highest potential impact on carbon sequestration and active system restoration," Colossal CEO Ben Lamm told Cowboy State Daily. "Bison are on every one of those lists. That was the writing on the wall for us, and prioritizing bison, because of their importance from an ecological restoration perspective, is really important to us.”
Fatuous Farting Facts
Methane emissions and carbon sequestration can be challenging to quantify, as the scientists who conducted the 2021 research measuring bison methane emissions admitted when working with bison.
“Few measurements (on bison) have been made due to their mobile grazing habits and safety issues associated with measuring non-domesticated animals,” the paper reads. “the current bison population of about 500,000 ... is likely to further increase, increasing the incentive for researchers and land managers to understand the environmental impacts of their expansion.
The upswell of interest and research into how domestic cattle's methane emissions compare to wild bison could have broad implications for the future of bison management and the cattle ranching industry.
In the meantime, there are far more cattle than bison in Wyoming, the nation, and the world. Wuerthner and many others believe the solution to lowering methane emissions can start at both ends of both animals.
“Even if emissions from cattle today were equal to bison 200 years ago, we had a different situation regarding how much carbon was accumulating in the atmosphere,” he said. “We could significantly contribute by reducing these emissions, and cattle are a major contributor.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
