Memento Mori illustrates the unseen repercussions of livestock monocultures across North America, exploring the relationships between endemic ecosystems and introduced domestic species. Fifty native animal species are depicted on three clay wild clay bodies, foraged from the region each creature inhabits. Each animal represented is undergoing rapid population decline as a direct result of rampant and ruinous cattle ranching practices. The severity of this threat is represented in the color of the ceramic object, with the brightest orange animals teetering on the brink of extinction. These fossil-like ceramic objects are installed alongside biological remnants - meat and bones - of Bos taurus, the domestic cow. This juxtaposition epitomizes the barbaric reality of industrialized meat production, wherein the cyclical slaughter of one species demands the annihilation of many.
This project started with a game for long-haul road trippers, introduced to me by my friend Belle during our first of two cross country treks in 2020. The game is pretty simple: when you see cows, in a herd or on their lonesome (which is rarely the case), you claim them as your own, and you get a whiteboard marker point tallied on the window of the van. If you pass a body of water big enough to fit a cow, you kill another player’s cows by drowning them, and whoever has the most cows when the destination is reached wins. For both trips our destination was the opposite coast, so the game continued indefinitely, the sounds of the road punctuated by the claiming and drowning of cows.
What I learned from that game is this: in nearly any landscape in the country, cows are omnipresent. Which makes sense, to an extent, considering these same lands once sustained Bison bison en masse, four legged ungulates akin to domestic cattle in many ways. For the indigenous peoples of North America, bison hunting was a direct tether to food, shelter, tools, and tribal autonomy for thousands of years. The extermination of the American bison - nearly sixty million animals - was a means of genocide and a tool of capitalism, clearing the land for white inhabitants and their very own species of bovid. One they could claim unambiguous ownership of, one that could be easily corralled into discrete units of capital, unlike the unruly herds of nomadic bison. Forests were razed, deserts were irrigated, waterways polluted, and seashores eroded, homogenizing the landscape of America to drive the burgeoning industry. Today, the United States is home to nearly one hundred million cows, an invasive population sustained by the luxuries of domesticity: a constant food supply, ensured reproductive success, protection from predators, and elimination of competitors.
As a student of ecology, observing the sprawl of cattle across the country from the window of the van led me to question the impacts of bovid populations on endemic communities of flora and fauna. The competitive exclusion principle, a fundamental concept of ecology, states that two populations of species cannot coexist indefinitely on the same limited resource; eventually, competition will drive one either to extinction or into a new ecological niche. When land is converted into pasture, cows are introduced as a competitor for resources, and are nearly always guaranteed success. So what of the species on the other end of this exchange, the populations driven from their natural habitats by domestic competition?
I began researching this project by narrowing the scope of my study to three regions with historic cattle populations and varying environmental conditions. As my interest in this topic began with a road trip, it seemed fitting to focus on the major waypoints of this drive: coastal Maine, central Utah, and the San Francisco Bay. The data I found on grazing pressures did not study macroscopic impacts on entire ecological networks; rather, research from state-run institutions identified individual species subject to ranching-related stressors. Combing through these dense species vulnerability reports unearthed fascinating and tragic stories of population decline, all with Bos taurus at the center.
Of the fifty species covered in this project, the majority are afflicted by habitat loss incurred by overgrazing and the silage of hay. The transformation of wildflower meadows into homogenous grasslands removes food sources for pollinators, and the clearance of these grasslands disturbs the nesting cycle of many bird species, such as Falco sparverius, the American kestrel. Species that inhabit the riparian zone, wetlands adjacent to rivers and streams, suffer pollution and degradation from encroaching bovid populations. Some face more niche and nuanced pressures. Anaxyrus microscaphus, a native Utah toad species, are increasingly present in cattle water tanks, where they attempt to reproduce with little to no success due to the stagnation. The underground homes of Dipodomys californicus, the California kangaroo rat, are compacted by trampling hooves, which in turn afflicts the horned lizards that rely on abandoned burrows for shelter. Conversion of riverside forests to pastureland induces runoff, obstructing the freshwater breeding cycle of Salmo salar, Atlantic Salmon. The list goes on.
This body of work is a product of the landscapes it studies, illustrating these threatened species in clay sourced from their native habitats.The formation of clay deposits occurs via the weathering of granite into its constituent mineral components, alumina, silica, and feldspar, the abundance of which defines the properties of the clay body. It takes many thousands of years of sedimentation for the deposits to form, a similar timeline to the evolution of endemic ecosystems prior to the introduction of domestic species. Turning unrefined clay into a workable artistic medium is an intensive process, and became an integral part of this body of work. The forms of these ceramic objects came about through the creation of simple test tiles, made from smoothing wet slip into layered slabs with a straight-edged tool. Although I had initially set out to make sculptural works for this project, I enjoyed the textured edges of the tiles, which seemed to mimic the layers of sediment deposited over centuries to form the clay itself. The final installation of this work, and the juxtaposition of the ceramic objects against biological materials, unites the two sides of this ecological exchange, telling a story of one species through the memories of many.
What captivates me about the domestic cow, as a species and a force of nature, is that despite its massive success on an ecological scale, it too is a victim of its own excess. Thirty million bovids - half the number of bison exterminated in the late 18th century - are slaughtered every year in the United States. As a species, cows have a lifespan of 18-22 years; as livestock, they rarely live to 42 months. Their flesh is a ubiquitous staple of the American household, storefront, and diet; their children have become byproducts of an industry centered around the exploitation of motherhood. As a competitor in the ecological arena, the cow is the undisputed victor. But as a product of industry, as bodies designed for the purpose of slaughter, how can Bos taurus be considered a success?
This concept of the contemporary domestic cow - a species at the nexus of biology and economics, introduced in America to transform the graveyard of the bison into profit and meat, slaughtered and reborn in hoards to sustain illegitimate claims of occupied land, as a competitor for resources, as a force of ecological destruction, and as yet another victim of the unrelenting machine of capitalism - is at the core of this body of work. Although informed by and reliant on extensive scientific research, this project cannot be considered science; the data collected is incomplete, and my analysis of it involved no experimentation, repetition, or objective observation. This has been my way of grappling with the repercussions of an unbridled monoculture with the language of visual art through a lens of scientific inquiry. When capitalism acts as a governing force of ecology, Homo sapiens become the sole beneficiaries of the land. In order to prevent the impending extinctions of these species and countless more, our relationship with domestic and wild ecosystems must be rebuilt to prioritize biodiversity over economic gain.
Works Cited
Center for Biological Diversity. Cattle grazing and the loss of biodiversity in the East Bay. n.p., n.d. Link
Christian, C. Saslaw, L. Butterfield, H. S. One size does not fit all: the use of cattle grazing for grassland management at Carrizo Plain National Monument. Desert Report. September 2008. Link
Fleischner, Thomas L. Ecological Costs of Livestock Grazing in Western North America. Conservation Biology, vol. 8 no. 3. 1994. Link
Lowell L. Wilson, K. G. MacDonald, H. H. Mayo and K. J. Drewey. Development of the Beef Cattle Industry. Historical Documents of the Purdue Cooperative Extension Service. Paper 3. 1965. Link
Maine 2015 Wildlife Action Plan Revision. SGCN and Habitat Stressors: Livestock Farming and Ranching. 13 January 2016. Link
Maine Department of Inland Fisheries Wildlife. Maine’s Wildlife Action Plan. September 2015. Link
Martin, Melina et al. Bison Research for the Native American Community. North Dakota State University. link.
Shahbandeh, M. Total number of all cattle and calves in the United States from 2001 to 2020. Statistica. 19 October 2020. Link
Shahbandeh, M. Total Slaughtered Cattle in the U.S. 2000-2019. Statistica. 15 February 2021. Link
State of Utah Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife Resources. Utah Sensitive Species List. 11 May 2020. Link
Szaro, R. C. Bel, S. C. Aitkin, K. Rinne, J. N. Impact of Grazing on a Riparian Garter Snake. United States Forest Service. Link
Tyler, Paul M. Clay. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of Mines. 1929.
U.S. Department of Agriculture. United States Standards for Grades of Slaughter Cattle. Agricultural Marketing Service. 1 July 1996. link
Utah Bureau of Land Management. Sensitive Wildlife Species List. December 2018. link
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Bison Range Timeline. Link
Utah Bureau of Land Management. Arizona Toad (Anaxyrus microscaphus) Species Status Statement. 20 April 2020. Link
Verbeck, Wilco C. Explaining General Patterns in Species Abundance and Distributions. Nature Education Knowledge. 2011. Link
Rana aurora draytonii, rana boylii.png
Species Index
Maine
Salmo salar, Alasmidonta vericosa, Sturnella magna, Cistothorus stellaris, Emydoidea blandingii, Esox americanus americanus, Notropis bifrenatus, Vertigo morsei, Satyrium edwardsii, Oenis polixenes katahdin, Cicindela marginipennis, Bombus pensylvanicus, Asio flammeus, Ammodramus savannarum, Bartramia longicauda, Falco sparverius, Eremophila alpestris, Circus cyaneus, Falco peregrinus, Myotis lucifugus.
Utah
Xantusia vigilis, Brachylagus idahoensis, Anaxyrus microscaphus, Microtus mexicanus, Oreohelix eurekensis, Dipsosaurus dorsalis,, Dolichonyx oryzivorous, Rana luteiventris, Lasiurus blossevillii, Lepidomeda aliciae, Athene cunicularia, Melanerpes formicivorus, Callisaurus draconoides, Cypseloides niger, Myotis thysanodes.
California
Otospermophilus beecheyi, Dipodomys californicus, Anniella pulchra, Speyeria callippe callippe, Phrynosoma coronatum, Lepidurus packardi, Thamnophis sirtalis infernalis, Rana boylii, Apodemia mormo langei, Rana aurora draytonii, Ambystoma californiense, Bombus franklini, Coluber lateralis euryxanthus, Euphydryas editha bayensis, Branchinecta lynchi,
Thank you to everyone who made this project possible, from letting me dig clay in your backyard to express shipping me boxes of cow bones from the east coast; Teagan McMahon, Bill Geisinger, Kelly Magleby, Annie Tronco, Diane Schilder, Belle Buroker, Olivia Hewitt, Tim Berg, and Sarah Gilbert. And most importantly, thank you to Kieran Silva for photographing my work and talking me through my doubts.