I sure hope this thread goes better than the original one with a similar name!
YouTube has recommended different videos about people converting the desert into forests, although I do not remember any details until this video. One showed an old man in Africa that was doing this singlehandedly--along with a seemingly large number of followers. It just talked about him motivating and teaching them. The old ways were destroying the land. They needed to save it with new ways. As far as I could tell, he taught them to plant trees, and it showed his success, large areas with bare dirt except for good-sized trees.
Trees are great, Arizona does not have enough of them, although I doubt that we have the rainfall to support many, and, of course, there is far too much heat.
However, Arizona does not have much bare ground like they showed in Africa. We have all kinds of vegetation. I do not think that it is very attractive, but I vastly prefer it to bare dirt.
So, this old [South?] African said that when he was a young man he helped establish national parks. They got rid of the hunters and elephants flourished, but the soil deteriorated, so he decided that they had 40,000 excess elephants. The government shot forty thousand elephants, and the soil deteriorated further.
He explains how he came to the conclusion that herds of wild animals kept the soil healthy. They stomped on the vegetation, whatever good that does, but trimmed it, fertilized it, and apparently spread seeds. Without the herds, the government burned vast tracts of land, which kept the growth down, but released an atrocious amount of carbon dioxide.
He talked about a significant portion of the Earth's surface that cannot support crops and the only way to provide human food is with livestock.
I love it up here. We have trees and stuff, but it still is not especially green, and open areas are mostly brush and grass, with a decent number of big bushes.
I see dozens of grazing cattle every week. I know there are a number of farms up here, there are many farms in the Phoenix area, but the soil is garbage, although apparently the natural vegetation is enough to sustain livestock.
Curiously, as I scrolled through the comments, I saw people commending him, saying that we need more of this, etc. Nobody trolled "Cows burp a lot!" Nobody wrote "No! This is wrong! We need to save the world by..."
I honestly wanted to know the other side, but I did not see one.
Edit: A bit over eight minutes in he says that bare ground is colder at dawn and warmer at dusk than even just ground covered with litter. Desertification changes the microclimate and enough desertification changes the macroclimate.