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Home / Anomalous_Items / Chordates / buffalo_chips / Images |
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American Bison (buffalo) are indiscriminate defecators in meadows and streams. Chips are rich in plant parts (especially seeds), enteric bacteria and algal nutrients (P, N). Watch for signs of buffalo chips or domesticated cattle wastes in your wallow. Animal wastes are a major cause of diminished water quality both because of their transmission of coliform bacteria, and their contribution of large amounts of phosphate and ammonia that can lead to toxic cyanobacterial communities. Image modified from a website that likely would prefer to remain anonymous.
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Bison bison -- a native perpetrator roaming animal preserves in North America, and also raised commercially. Water pollution from cattle feedlots has been increasing during the past century as the biomass of waste from commercial operations has increased. Modified from image posted online
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"Factory farms -- giant livestock farms also known as feedlots that house thousands of cows, chickens or pigs -- produce staggering amounts of animal wastes. The way these wastes are stored and used has profound effects on human health and the environment.
On most factory farms, animals are crowded into relatively small areas; their manure and urine are funneled into massive waste lagoons. These cesspools often break, leak or overflow, sending dangerous microbes, nitrate pollution and drug-resistant bacteria into water supplies. Factory-farm lagoons also emit toxic gases such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and methane. What's more, the farms often spray the manure onto land, ostensibly as fertilizer -- these "sprayfields" bring still more of these harmful substances into our air and water. Yet in spite of the huge amounts of animal wastes that factory farms produce, they have largely escaped pollution regulations; loopholes in the law and weak enforcement share the blame. NRDC has fought, and won, a number of courtroom battles over the years to force the federal government to deal with the problem of factory farms, and the U.S. EPA is now under court order to set tighter controls on release of pathogens into the environment by factory farms, exercise greater oversight on factory farms' pollution-reduction plans, and ensure that these plans are made available to the public." -- Natural Resources Defense Council -- posted online (15 Jul 2005)
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