Breeding Rare Animals Helps to Preserve Diverse Gene Pool

FREESTONE, Calif.--Frazier, the four-horned Navajo-Churro ram, Dusty, the curly-haired horse and a flock of skinny turkeys may look wacky, but Hans Peter Jorgensen is serious when he says they can help save a world being consumed by sameness.

The risks of factory farming--which produces cheap, easy-to-raise “clone-like animals”--ultimately outweigh the benefits, said the manager of the C. S. Foundation farm, which produced the skinny turkeys and the other unusual animals.

“(Factory farming) is a short-term gain for a long-term, serious, serious loss,” Jorgensen said.

“When plants and animals are identical genetically, they have the same strengths and weaknesses,” said a paper produced by the private, New York City-based C. S. Fund. “When one variety suffers destruction, entire plant and animal populations can be irretrievably lost; uniformity engenders vulnerability.”

“Between 1600 and 1900, experts estimate, one plant or animal became extinct every four years,” the report said. “Today it is estimated that at least one species is disappearing each day. By the late 1990s, if current trends continue, one species will be lost every hour.”

“Extinction is forever; you don’t get them back,” Jorgensen said. “Our position is: Don’t throw the genes away, your grandchildren might need them.”

The foundation quoted recent studies that show less than 5% of the vegetable seed varieties available in the United States in 1903 are still around today, and similar reductions in animal gene diversity threaten food and clothing sources.

Jorgensen compared the current situation to the Irish potato famine, which resulted in the deaths of about 750,000 people from disease or starvation from 1845 to 1847. That is when the potato crop failed because of a plant blight that he said might have been avoided if the Irish had relied on more varieties, instead of a limited number that were all susceptible to the disease.

“That was a crisis in genetic diversity,” he said.

The C. S. Foundation is financed by Maryanne Mott, a Montana rancher, nature photographer and General Motors heiress, whose father, Charles Stewart Mott, founded the auto giant. The foundation has various causes its directors believe promote human and cultural survival: genetic diversity, peace and ecology.

About 15 acres of land in the sleepy Sonoma County town of Freestone, population 54, about 65 miles north of San Francisco, were purchased by the fund in 1983 when it moved from nearby Santa Rosa. Jorgensen, a former college art teacher, cabinet maker, general contractor and son of a Midwestern dairy farmer, was hired to run a project to conserve rare or minor breeds.

Rare breeds of cattle and horses are those with less than 200 annual registrations; rare sheep, goat and pig breeds have less than 500. Minor breeds of cattle, sheep, goats and horses are those with fewer than 1,000 annual registrations.

The foundation hopes to carry its conservation message through public education and by finding support for genetic diversity preservation.

The fund’s first targets have included the Navajo-Churro sheep and Bashkir-Curly horse. Recently added to the list was the naturally mating Bronze turkey.

The hearty, long-haired Churro sheep has a 450-year history in North America, dating to when they were left behind by Spanish conquistadors who had taken the animals on their journeys as food. The Navajos began using the Churro--with its long, coarse, double-coated fleece--for ceremonial rugs.

“That’s why the old Navajo rugs would last 200 years,” Jorgensen said.

The Churro quickly adapted to dramatic desert climate changes, altitude, limited water resources and forage conditions, and Navajo flocks soon numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

But poor herding practices, a federal livestock-reduction program that Jorgensen said was aimed at humbling the Navajos and saving Lake Mead from sheep-caused erosion led to their decimation.

Now near extinction, there are about 500 Churros; about 10% of their rare gene pool is in the Freestone flock. A national Navajo-Churro sheep registry was set up in 1988.

At Utah State University, Churro Sheep Project spokeswoman Kristy Selman touted the animals’ ability to resist internal parasites and contagious foot rot, problems traditionally expensive for the sheep industry.

Churro lambs sell for $250 to $1,000 and are of great value for the Navajos’ “Two Gray Hills” style carpets that use the soft but strong black, brown and white yarns that require no dyeing, Selman said.

Many older Navajo weavers still cherish the Churro, which the project supplies to reservations in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado.

“It’s been a long time since they’ve seen any of these,” she said. “When they do, their whole faces light up. . . . When they see it, they want it and they want it now.”

The success of the foundation’s efforts on behalf of the turkey remains to be seen. The turkey commonly raised by commercial growers today has been bred for white meat, an absence of pin feathers and breast muscles so large the poultry cannot mate naturally. Instead, reproduction is handled by artificial insemination.

“I think we’ve taken a little step too far,” said Jorgensen while gazing at the gobbling flock in what he calls the “Turkey Hilton.”

The foundation donates its turkey eggs to poultry fanciers or sells them.

The small, sure-footed Bashkir-Curly horse represents one of the foundation’s mixed successes. Research into the historical origin and genetics of the rare North American horses with curly hair showed that the stocky, gentle-natured horse who sheds his long, kinky hair every summer was not a separate breed after all, but a “very crossed-up bunch.”

One goal of the foundation is to have “living history farms” or zoos keep rare or endangered breeds of animals because they generally provide more continuity than individual breeders.

At the UC Davis agricultural extension office, spokeswoman Heidi Johnson said there has been increasing interest in rare breeds of animals. But she chalked it up to a “kind of fad thing” that has evolved from a curiosity in exotic animals about five years ago.