Print PageIn this presentation I provide an overview of an international project to review the challenges of conserving wildlife while maintaining livestock on rangelands. Initiated in 2006 as a joint effort of the Zoological Society of London and the Wildlife Conservation Society, the results were recently published as a book (Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2010). The project drew on the collective expertise of 46 ecologists, economists, sociologists, veterinarians, and conservation practitioners distributed across all the continents of the world. We defined wildlife loosely as indigenous free-ranging mammals and birds with an emphasis on large mammals (>5 kg). We considered a rangeland to be any terrestrial ecosystem in which livestock production is practiced with animals feeding on wild plants, but our main focus was on semi-arid ecosystems. The central question asked of all contributors was: can rangelands be wildlands?
Results/Conclusions
Historically, major anthropogenic impacts on rangelands have been land transformation through cultivation and infrastructure development (roads, railways, fences, powerlines, energy developments, etc.), combined with chronic intensive grazing and invasions of exotic species. Most remaining rangelands are marginal for agriculture and are undervalued within the formal economy as drought-prone regions relegated to traditional, commodity-oriented livestock management. In most cases the livestock is privately owned by individuals or families, while the wildlife is communally owned and managed by government agencies. Wildlife resources on private or public lands usually provide inadequate revenues for land users to embrace wildlife conservation, except in the more arid regions where opportunity costs are lowest. Rangelands of the western United States all bear the legacy of intensive livestock production, which was the last form of land use to become regulated by the government in the 1930s. That legacy, followed by continued, albeit reduced, grazing now presents a suite of ecological effects of which the main ones are altered riparian habitats and biological soil crusts as well as encroachment of woody plants. Results include (1) reduction in the capacity of rangelands to provide ecosystem services and (2) distortion of wildlife communities by veterinary regulations and predator controls. As regards remediation, the collective vision of the participants of this project emphasizes a shift from commodity-orientated (livestock) management of rangelands towards service-oriented management. But this vision depends on an economic feedback loop by which ranchers and subsistence pastoralists are adequately rewarded by service users (e.g. urban water consumers) for their stewardship of rangelands for multiple benefits, including livestock production and wildlife conservation.
