WHO will save the endangered Sheko cows of Ethiopia or the Red Masai “hairless” sheep of Kenya? Protecting wild animals is important, but a UN conference in Switzerland this week heard pleas to protect their domesticated cousins, too.
The world devotes far more to protecting wild animals, and even crops, than threatened livestock. There is cash for storing seeds for planting, but not to store semen and eggs for re-implantation.
That must change to protect the futures of poor farmers in the tropics, says Carlos Sere, director of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya. “Breeds are disappearing…
