The Effects of Two Different Cattle Grazing Management Strategies on Ecosystem Health, Cattle Production and Wildlife Habitat Use
One thing is clear about conservation in Africa: parks are not enough. If wildlife conservation succeeds, it will be because people and wildlife learn to live with each other in mixed-use lands. These mixed-use lands already make up a vast and critical part of most wild species’ rangs, but many are undergoing rapid degradation from overgrazing. This degradation means less grass for wildlife as well as cattle. In a part of the world where many rural people live marginal existences and where livestock husbandry is a deeply-rooted cultural practice, simply reducing or eliminating livestock is not practical. Instead, we need creative solutions to minimizing the negative, competitive interactions and maximizing the positive interactions between livestock and wildlife. The aim of the project is to experimentally test the effects of two different cattle grazing management strategies on ecosystem health, cattle production, and wildlife habitat use. We will be testing whether cattle can be used to simulate large-scale herbivore migrations—patterns of animal movement that have broken down as wildlife habitat has become increasingly fragmented and pastoralists have been forced to adopt more sedentary livelihoods. This research project will address very applied questions of land management as well as fundamental questions about how different species of ungulates coexist in species-rich African savannas. This is a large-scale experiment involving close collaborations between researchers and the management of the Mpala Research Centre and Ranch.
Included in the research will be a field course on the ecology and conservation of African savannas. This course will incorporate core concepts of the Savannas and Societies initiative. Students will participate in field exercises in Kenya to gain first-hand experience with these concepts.
PIs
Collaborators:
Wilfred Odadi (Egerton University), Jayne Belnap (USGS), Siva Sundaresan (Denver Zoo), Margaret Kinnaird (Mpala Research Center), Michael Littlewood (Mpala Conservancy).
