To get a picture of how much methane wild ruminants such as deer, elk and llamas emit, researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany, have used data on the size of animal populations and combined it with estimates of methane emissions based on body weight and diet.
It's estimated that wild ruminants emit three million tons of methane each year. More than half of that comes from just six deer species, with the white-tailed deer the absolute worst. Our common moose is far behind, but still comes in second on the emissions list.
Swedish cows
Three million tons may sound like a lot, but it is no more than what Swedish animals in Swedish agriculture emit annually. In 2024, methane emissions from Swedish animals were just over three million tons, according to statistics from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. At that time, this corresponded to about half of the Swedish agricultural sector's emissions.
And although some deer species fart more than domestic cows, the wild animals' share is still about 38 times less than the amount coming from domestic animals and significantly less than the 600 million tons of methane emitted annually globally.
An emergency brake
The majority of methane emissions come from leaks in infrastructure, such as fossil fuels and waste landfills, but nature also releases methane, for example when permafrost in the Arctic thaws due to rising temperatures.
Methane is a greenhouse gas that strongly contributes to global warming, but it has also been called the emergency brake of climate change because it disappears from the atmosphere much faster than carbon dioxide.
Even though animals are not responsible for the worst emissions, a lot of research is underway on how to reduce methane emissions from domestic cows through diet, among other things.
Methane is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. During the 20th century, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere doubled.
Methane is the most important component of natural gas and is formed by methanogens during the decomposition of plant material in oxygen-free environments in wetlands, such as peat bogs and rice fields. Ruminants, such as cattle, excrete a lot of methane.
In the frozen seabed and tundra of the Arctic, there are large amounts of methane hydrates that are only stable at high pressure and low temperature.
Source: NE.se
