Why animals on the move...matters
Look at those arrows! Global animal migration map (Source: UN.org)
Around late August or early September of last year, my family and I watched over a young, heat-exhausted cedar waxwing for a few days as its flock passed through our neighborhood greenspace.
TLC in the AC
After introducing him to the glories of air conditioning and offering some water with a tiny dropper (he'd been panting on sunny asphalt in the middle of a road) we called the local wildlife center.
We were advised to bring him back to a safe spot near where we found him, and wait a short distance away to see if his mother would find him.
She sure did.
Flying lessons
Our little friend eventually got the hang of flying, and within a few days all of the cedar waxwings departed the neighborhood.
Jordan likes to say that everything an animal does is useful to nature.
This time of year, animals are migrating.
So hold on here with me for a minute—
Obviously, I can see why it's useful to animals to migrate: they're following food sources and livable temperatures.
They're traveling to locations suited for breeding and rearing their young.
But how is animal migration useful to nature?
Turns out, there aren't many ways in which migration isn't useful to nature.
All of that movement in the animal kingdom is like a living engine, driving ecological health, sustaining food webs, and balancing global ecosystems.
It's a crucial contribution that animals make simply by doing what they naturally do.
For example, animal migration is a nutrient conveyer belt:
🦬 Land animals transport nutrients in ways that natural forces simply cannot, for example moving nutrients against prevailing water and wind currents, and transporting nutrients uphill.
🐳 Marine mammals act like deep sea pumps, diving deep to feed, then releasing nutrient-rich waste at the surface, fueling sunlight-level microscopic ocean life.
🐟 Pacific salmon carry ocean nutrients like marine nitrogen and phosphorus to forests that are miles inland and upstream when they migrate to their spawning grounds, creating waste products while alive and leaving nutrient-dense carcasses to be strewn about by bears after they spawn and die. Scientists can track marine nutrients in the rings of giant, old-growth trees hundreds of miles from the ocean.
Animal migration is also one of nature's go-to modes of seed dispersal:
🌳 Migrating birds and mammals are nature's primary method for transporting seeds to replant forests and reintroduce & maintain plant diversity throughout the globe.
🕊️ Bird and animal migration also allows plant species to shift their geographic ranges as temperature and rainfall zones change over time.
Other benefits of animal migration include:
🧬 Genetic diversity (interbreeding between distant populations strengthens species resilience)
🦗 Pest control (insect-eating migrants regulate local pest populations)
🕸️ Food web support (migrating animals, birds, fish, and insects serve as critical seasonal prey to local predator populations)
🌾 Overgrazing prevention (constant movement allows local vegetation to recover between bursts of migrating herbivores)
🦋 Cross-pollination (migrating bats, birds, and insects pollinate diverse flora)
🌊 Ocean mixing (mass marine migrations like whales physically stir and oxygenate water)
And an example very familiar to us on the farm:
🐂 Natural fertilizer distribution (large herbivores on the savannah, such as wildebeests and zebras, eat massive amounts of grass in fertile areas, then spread millions of tons of dung - providing essential nitrogen and phosphorus to barren soils)
So, the instinct of animals to move and migrate?
Super useful to them, and beneficial to the whole of the global natural world.
And what does all of this have to do with our farm?
Managed rotational grazing on farms like ours mimics the movement of migration.
It accomplishes the vast ecological benefits of global migration on boundaried, modern farmland.
All while providing essential food to human populations.
Aerating the ocean
Aerating the earth
* * *
The food we raise is great for the planet. It's great for you. And it gives the animals who are raised here a truly great life.
Have you stocked up recently?
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