Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples


Book Description

Wildlife conservation and other environmental protection projects can have tremendous impact on the lives and livelihoods of the often mobile, difficult-to-reach, and marginal peoples who inhabit the same territory. The contributors to this collection of case studies, social scientists as well as natural scientists, are concerned with this human element in biodiversity. They examine the interface between conservation and indigenous communities forced to move or to settle elsewhere in order to accommodate environmental policies and biodiversity concerns. The case studies investigate successful and not so successful community-managed, as well as local participatory, conservation projects in Africa, the Middle East, South and South Eastern Asia, Australia and Latin America. There are lessons to be learned from recent efforts in community managed conservation and this volume significantly contributes to that discussion.




Conservation and Development Interventions at the Wildlife/livestock Interface


Book Description

During a forum held at the Vth IUCN World Parks Congress in South Africa in 2003, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the IUCN SSC Veterinary and Southern Africa Sustainable Use Specialist Groups (VSG and SASUSG) brought together nearly 80 experts from Africa and beyond to develop ways to tackle the immense health-related conservation and development challenges at the wildlife/domestic animal/human interface facing East and Southern Africa today, and tomorrow. This volume focuses on several themes of critical importance to the future of animal agriculture, wildlife, and, of course, people: competition over grazing and water resources, disease mitigation, local and global food security and other potential sources of conflict related to the overall challenges of land-use planning and the pervasive reality of resource constraints. This publication seeks to draw attention to the need to move towards a "one health" perspective - an approach that was the foundation of the discussions in Durban, and a theme pervading these thought-provoking, insightful, and practical Proceedings.




Integrated Modeling of Land Use and Climate Change Impacts on Multiscale Ecosystems of Central African Watersheds


Book Description

Assessment and management of ecosystem services demands diverse knowledge of the system components. Land use change occurring mainly through deforestation, expansion of agriculture and unregulated extraction of natural resources are the greatest challenges of the Congo basin and yet is central to supporting over 100 million people. This study undertook to implement an integrated modeling of multiscale ecosystems of central African watersheds and model the impact of anthropogenic factors on elephant population in Greater Virunga landscape. The study was conducted at varied scales, regional, landscape, and community. Regional study included watershed analysis and hydrological assessment using remotely sensed data implemented in Geographical information System. Species distribution modeling using generalized linear models using presence only and pseudo absence data was also done at regional scale. The major findings were that ecosystem services for the Congo basin are spatially varied and there are significant differences in their distribution of ecosystem services at a subwatershed level three and six and the distribution of endangered and threatened species is more concentrated in the central part of the basin and most of these species occur mainly inside protected areas. Poaching and sustained civil wars were the biggest threat to elephant conservation in the region. Improvement in law enforcement, monitoring, and increasing household incomes for communities living adjacent to protected areas would help to reduce the impact of poaching on elephant population dynamics. Climate change did not show immediate direct impacts on the elephant population, but thermal and latent heat effects could be occurring. A change in habitat, however, showed resulted in an upward trend in elephant population for all age classes. The local communities heavily depend on these ecosystem services for their livelihoods. It is therefore recommended that reasonable financing to strengthen law enforcement and monitoring is done, multiple policy options should be considered in order to maximize ecosystem benefits. Creation of partnerships and research networks need to be promoted. Existing transboundary collaboration initiatives should continue and be supported by the donor community in order to build peace and dram support for wildlife and wild habitat protection.




People and Rangelands


Book Description




Natural Resource Management Reimagined


Book Description

The Systems Ecology Paradigm (SEP) incorporates humans as integral parts of ecosystems and emphasizes issues that have significant societal relevance such as grazing land, forestland, and agricultural ecosystem management, biodiversity and global change impacts. Accomplishing this societally relevant research requires cutting-edge basic and applied research. This book focuses on environmental and natural resource challenges confronting local to global societies for which the SEP methodology must be utilized for resolution. Key elements of SEP are a holistic perspective of ecological/social systems, systems thinking, and the ecosystem approach applied to real world, complex environmental and natural resource problems. The SEP and ecosystem approaches force scientific emphasis to be placed on collaborations with social scientists and behavioral, learning, and marketing professionals. The SEP has given environmental scientists, decision makers, citizen stakeholders, and land and water managers a powerful set of tools to analyse, integrate knowledge, and propose adoption of solutions to important local to global problems.




Annual Report


Book Description




East Africa Animal Feed Action Plan


Book Description

The regional animal feed action plan was formulated through a consultative and participatory process building on experiences and lessons learnt by wide spectrum of key stakeholders in public and private sectors, notably, policy makers, traders, pastoralist and farmers' organizations, civil society, NGOs, and the development partners. It builds on the earlier consultative experience sharing workshop on feed by USAID, ILRI, IGAD and FAO in the region. The plan provides broad opportunities for partnerships with producers, governments, and private sector, development and humanitarian organizations at the national and regional levels. It provides a guided approach to collectively tackle the problems of animal feed and pave the way for sustainable production of quality animals and products while improving competitiveness, profitability and ensuring sustainable feed resource management for the entire Eastern African region. The aim of the action plan is to provide guidelines to communities, countries, private sector and livestock stakeholders to optimally utilize the available feed resources in East Africa to increase the supply as well as improve the quality of animals, products and by-products and to maximize the economic and social benefits of the livestock sector.




The Impact of Climate Change on Livestock Management in Africa


Book Description

This paper develops the structural Ricardian method, a new approach to modeling agricultural performance using cross-sectional evidence, and uses the method to study animal husbandry in Africa. The model is intended to estimate the structure beneath Ricardian results in order to understand how farmers change their behavior in response to climate. A survey of over 5,000 livestock farmers in 10 countries reveals that the selection of species, the net income per animal, and the number of animals are all highly dependent on climate. As climate warms, net income across all animals will fall, especially across beef cattle. The fall in net income causes African farmers to reduce the number of animals on their farms. The fall in relative revenues also causes them to shift away from beef cattle and toward sheep and goats. All farmers will lose income but the most vulnerable farms are large African farms that currently specialize in beef cattle. Small livestock and large livestock farms respond to climates differently. Small farms are diversified, relying on dairy cattle, goats, sheep, and chickens. Large farms specialize in dairy and beef cattle. Estimating a separate multinomial logit selection model for small and large farms reveals that the two types of farm choose species differently and specifically have different climate response functions. The regressions of the number of animals also reveal that large farms are more responsive to climate. The results indicate that warming will be harmful to commercial livestock owners, especially cattle owners. Owners of commercial livestock farms have few alternatives either in crops or other animal species. In contrast, small livestock farms are better able to adapt to warming or precipitation increases by switching to heat tolerant animals or crops. Livestock operations will be a safety valve for small farmers if warming or drought causes their crops to fail.