Specieswatch: Wild deer release millions of tonnes of methane a year
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- Theresia Yazbeck and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, published new calculations in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences on wild ruminant methane emissions.
- Wild ruminants release approximately 3 million tonnes of methane into the atmosphere each year, using gut bacteria to break down fibrous plants in a process similar to domesticated cows.
- Wild deer account for more than half of those emissions, with just six species producing the majority of the 3 million tonne total.
- The 3 million tonnes from wild ruminants is roughly 38 times less than the methane emitted annually by domesticated livestock.
- Global methane emissions exceed 600 million tonnes per year, making wildlife's contribution a small but persistent fraction of the total.
- Researchers combined recent global wild animal population estimates with methane emission rates derived from body mass and diet to produce the figures.
Why it matters: This study puts a concrete figure on wild ruminants' methane contribution, making clear that domesticated livestock dominate animal-related methane emissions by a factor of roughly 38. That comparison reinforces that efforts to curb agricultural methane will have far more impact than managing wildlife populations.
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