Can heritage Criollo cattle promote sustainability in a changing world?

Viewpoints about the suitability of ruminant livestock in drylands vary, but most agree that strategies that maximize both land health and pastoral welfare are needed, especially as climate change intensifies. This special issue focuses on the use of heritage Criollo cattle as one such strategy for ranching in arid lands of the Americas. Authors report on fifteen years of research about Criollo cattle landscape distribution, heat tolerance, and diet selection. Many connect those behaviors and traits to the potential for ranching adaptive capacity, resilience, and sustainability. In this introduction to the special issue, we describe how we use an indicator system to systematically document that potential. Based on existing research and anecdotal evidence, we hypothesize that the use of Criollo cattle is associated with desirable outcomes for nine indicators, ordered from strong to weak certainty: biotic integrity, total factor productivity, water use efficiency, soil health, commodity quality, greenhouse gas mitigation, stability of profits, rancher self-determination, and rancher communion. Ongoing and new indicator measurements will be conducted at ranches in arid lands across the Americas. We aim to improve understanding of the benefits and inadvertent drawbacks of adopting Criollo cattle, to