Nigeria may soon become the site of one of the largest livestock investments in its history. JBS, the world’s largest meat company, is pursuing a reported $2.5 billion investment that could reshape parts of the country’s agricultural sector. The proposal has been welcomed by many for its potential economic benefits, but before it moves forward, Nigerians deserve clear answers about what it could mean for communities, land, water, and the climate. Much of the discussion around the project has focused on jobs, agricultural development, food security, and economic opportunity. Those are important goals. But there is another dimension that deserves far greater scrutiny: Methane. JBS is not simply the world’s largest meat producer. It is also responsible for more methane emissions than ExxonMobil and Shell combined, according to estimates published by Greenpeace in 2024. JBS undoubtedly disputes these figures, but the broader point is difficult to ignore: When measured by climate impact, the world’s largest livestock companies increasingly belong in the same conversation as the world’s largest fossil fuel companies. Methane rarely attracts the same public attention as carbon dioxide, yet it is responsible for roughly a third of the warming the world is experiencing today. Because it traps far more heat than carbon dioxide over the short term, cutting methane emissions is widely seen as one of the fastest ways to slow near-term climate change. Much of the public debate focuses on oil and gas. But industrial livestock production is also a major source, accounting for much of the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Introducing animals outside their natural ranges is a practice fraught with risk, one that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) — the recognized global authority on the natural world — explicitly discourages. The IUCN’s guidelines for responsible wildlife translocation classify the importation of nonnative wildlife as a “critical risk” to be carried out only under a very narrow set of exceptional circumstances. There are very good reasons for these precautions. The natural world is awash with examples of species that were released outside their natural ranges becoming invasive, with devastating consequences. Even if species released outside their natural ranges don’t become invasive, they may still drastically disrupt the ecological dynamics of a community. For decades, translocations of animals within their former ranges have been used as a helpful tool in conservation. Reintroduction of species for conservation purposes such as bolstering an existing population, reestablishing a population that has gone extinct in the wild, and maintaining genetic diversity all rely on translocations. Such movement of animals may also help enhance tourism by offering greater numbers or a more diverse array of local species. Moving animals outside their natural range (an introduction rather than a reintroduction), however, is a fundamentally different and a potentially problematic proposition. The outcomes of these “conservation introduction” cases are often binary: the animals struggle mightily, if not die off, or the animals manage to acclimate to the unfamiliar surroundings and proceed to compete for resources with the native species, potentially inflicting harm in the process. And while…This article was originally published on Mongabay