The Wool Wire | January 15, 2025

News snippets from the wool world

Hello, my wool friends,

I send extra good wishes to those of you in Los Angeles—and those who have loved ones there—who've been impacted by the fires. The scale of the devastation is almost too vast to comprehend, especially with more winds coming. I hope that you are safe and finding solid footing. (If you're looking for help or ways to help, here's an excellent list of resources.)

Climate change is real, it's here, and it's delivering critical consequences for us every day. I'm not naive enough to suggest that sheep alone can save the planet. But I do know that sheep, and the wool they grow, can absolutely play a key role in helping us mitigate the effects of climate change—and that's what we're going to talk about today.

Amazing Graze

The biggest impact has to do with what sheep do for our soil. Grazing sheep and other ruminants have the potential to help soil better absorb and retain moisture, support a greater diversity of native plants, and provide much-needed wildlife habitat. Grazing can also help draw down excess environmental CO2 by stimulating plant growth. And, unlike tractors or lawn mowers, the only fuel sheep need is the very matter they're tasked with eating.

In this realm, I'll point you to quite possibly my favorite TED Talk of all time. It was given by Allan Savory in 2013. His Savory Institute has become a global movement that's helped regenerate more than 75 million acres of the world's grasslands.

This talk always leaves me feeling hopeful.

Feeding Against the Flames

Grazing sheep can do more than just feed the soil. In areas prone to wildfire, the targeted grazing of sheep is helping to reduce the excess flammable vegetation (called "fuel loads") that helps fires like the ones in Los Angeles spread so quickly.

Here's a very helpful primer on targeted grazing for managing fire risk. The California Climate and Agriculture Network also has a good backgrounder on what's going on in California, including its work on the SB-675 bill, which was passed and approved by the governor last fall. I also enjoyed this short piece on how prescribed grazing has been implemented successfully in the EU.

A Breath of Fresh Air

As the planet warms, there are signs that our air quality is getting worse. I'm not just talking about smoke from wildfires, but everyday air around the globe. And here, again, sheep—or more specifically their wool—can be very helpful.

In case you hadn't seen it, I put together a quick video about wool's magic powers as an air purifier.

We can't all walk around with a sweater held over our face. But we can use wool in our air filters. The pioneer in that field is New Zealand's Lanaco, whose wool filters are being used by NASA.

But, as much as it might feel like we're on a space mission sometimes, we live firmly on earth. Fortunately, the prospect of seeing wool air filters in more homes just got a lot brighter. This fall, Lanaco partnered with Unilever brand Blueair to develop the first high-performance electrostatic wool filter for Blueair air purifiers. To quote from the linked article:

[Lanaco's] EcoStatic electrostatic filter technology uses positive and negative fibre surface charges to attract and retain particulate matter effectively and the media’s porous structure allows air to easily flow through a purifier.

Unlike oil-based plastics or synthetics which the air purifier industry has been built on, EcoStatic filter media is based entirely on wool, which is naturally fire resistant and hydrophobic so water won’t build up and clog it.

I'll be first in line for one of those filters.

Picnic Beneath the Panels

As we turn away from fossil fuels and toward alternative energy sources, we're going to see more solar panels crop up across the landscape. With panels comes the need to manage the land on which those panels sit, when they aren't installed on concrete or rooftops.

Far quieter and more efficient than any gas-fueled machinery is a humble flock of hungry sheep. There's even a term for it, "solar grazing" and "agrovolatics." While a lot more research needs to be done in order for this to be a definitive finding, I was fascinated to read about a study being done to see if grazing beneath solar panels impacts the quality of the fleece. (Hint: The answer is yes.)

Signs for Celebration

And finally, on January 25th I'll be giving the keynote lecture at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival's Virtual Winterfest, talking about signs of a wool revival. You can find out more and register here.

On that note, I'll let you go.

Thanks, as always, for your readership and your support.

Until next time,

Clara