Farming kangaroos instead of sheep and cattle in Australia could cut by almost a quarter the greenhouse gases produced by grazing livestock, which account for 11 percent of the nation's annual emissions, said a new study.
Removing seven million cattle and 36 million sheep by 2020 and replacing them with 175 million kangaroos, to produce the same amount of meat, could lower national greenhouse gases by 3 percent a year, said the University of New South Wales study.
Methane from the foregut of cattle and sheep constitutes 11 percent of Australia's total greenhouse emissions, but kangaroos produce negligible amounts of methane, said the study.
The study said methane was a principal concern in climate change because more than 500 million metric tons of the gas entered the atmosphere annually, which exceeds the amount that can be naturally removed.
Methane's warming potential over a 100-year time frame is 21 times higher than that of carbon dioxide, but its chemical lifetime in the atmosphere is only 8 to 12 years compared with carbon dioxide's 100 years.
