“Experience to learn from the Somali Region, Ethiopia.”
BY KIDANE G/MESKEL, ABDINASIR ABDIKADIR, ABDIRISAK AHMED
There are numerous economic importance of rangelands to the country, but much of their potential benefit is not yet reaped due to the ever increasing intensity and magnitude of rangeland degradation in time. Comparable to this effect, currently, the biophysical condition of the Somali rangelands such as vegetation cover, feed biomass production, plant biodiversity, and soil fertility are being degraded at an alarming rate (Amaha 2006; personal communication, 2020).
Thus an activity was initiated in Somali Regional State; particularly in the Kebri-Dahar Zone; which is the primary grassland grazing area where degradation of indigenous species and the coming out/replacement of noxious invasive Prosopis species has escalated most.
In the selected range-land sites the risks associated with Prosopis were loss of residential areas, cropping and grazing lands. Many of the pastoral and agro-pastoral communities affected did categorized Prosopis to be a menace crop that requires a national and regional priority campaign to ensure food/feed secure society in the pastoral areas (Plate 2). The tree is highly invasive and occupies significant area of land previously used for grazing and crop production.
A sustainable control and management strategy implemented in Prosopis-affected areas from the perspective of holistic approach (community, resource base and ecosystem process) on the use of holistic ecosystem rangeland management will assist to encourage confidence and resilience of the communities; ultimately achieving the goal of creating food/feed secure society at large.
It is clear that a well-managed rangeland ecosystem potentially sustains the life of living organisms (livestock, wildlife, and edible fodders) in the pastoral areas. To this end, the primary attempt should be to increase and improve the availability of livestock feed resources through better management and rehabilitation of the degrading range vegetation. Nevertheless, such development interventions require emphasis and adherence to ecosystem-based mitigation and adaptation strategies that do support pastoralist’s livelihood and sustainability of the environmental resources in place.
To maintain and improve the rangeland ecosystem in a brittle/fragile environment, we need to think of the unthinkable, the livestock, which many of us blame the animals for causing overgrazing and degradation of the grazing area.
But, the truth is not the livestock rather the blame should go to the way we manage the livestock in one hand and the grazing area on the other. This unscientific dogma of condemnation is because of the training we had at university, like all scientists of that era, that large animals such as domestic cattle could damage grazing land. Only keeping numbers low and scattering stock widely would prevent the destructive trampling and intense grazing one could expect from livestock. Under the present circumstances, thanks to Allan an ecologist for disproving the dogma that helps to reverse the millennia of damage humankind has inflicted on the rangeland in the more brittle environments by trying to protect it from the effects of trampling that were perceived as evil by many scientists and policymakers of different countries.
Thus, as a breakthrough, it is paramount important to play around the four fundamental processes of ecosystems (effective water cycle, mineral cycle, community dynamics, and energy flow) using livestock to sustain life in the rangeland.
This reveals that it is the livestock that creates a favorable environment to stimulate plant growth and that increased yield of biomass production in the arid rangelands. This animal impact is attributed to dunging, urinating, and the trampling effect they cause on old plant growth crashing it to the ground as mulch to cover the soil surface. By so doing, there is the decay process that naturally occurs, which as a result soil fertility and water retention down the soil profile get increased for new soil seed bank re-generation that potentially rehabilitates the ecosystem (Savory, 1988, Savory, et.al., 1999 and Esler, et.al., 2006).
In such vital physical functions of the livestock or animal impact tool, we can reverse degradation and we can manage rangeland which is on the verge of losing vegetation cover. Therefore, livestock plays a key role in the restoration of degraded rangeland areas. This experience was observed in different arid and semi-arid areas in tropical countries of Africa, Australia, and America. From this experience, a total of 11 ha, of land were cleared from Prosopis to rehabilitate the degraded rangeland in Kebridahar. From the 11 ha, one hectare was reserved for data collection to strongly testify and convince policymakers on how livestock plays a key role in the restoration of degraded rangelands.
Thus, the animal impact tool was subjected as a treatment in a 30mtx30mt plot size in 3 replications with a control (no animal impact) in each replication. Then each plot was fenced by the cleared materials (branch of Prosopis) to have Krall or a holding area to crowd largely herds of animals every night for consecutive 10 days (Plate 3) with the assumption that the high animal impact will bring immediate improvement on vegetation attributes (vegetation basal cover, diversity, density, biomass yield) and soil parameters.
Note: This article is adapted from a research by Kidane G/Meskel, 1Researcher in Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, Abdinasir Abdikadir and Abdirisak Ahmed Researchers in Somali Region Pastoral Agro pastoral Research Institute
The Ethiopian Heraled 17 January
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