Mobile Grazing sub-system on Communal Areas in Tropical Sub-humid and Humid Zones - LGH1

This sub-system is mainly represented in tropical Africa, rarely in America and Asia. In these zones where the majority of livestock owners are sedentary, some groups of pastoralists are transhumants or semi-transhumants. Compared with sedentary systems, the mobile systems allow the use of natural resources in remote areas with low population density and reduced infrastructure, a better repartition of stocking rate on pastures, the access to key resources in dry season.

Extensive sub-humid regions, in particular the riverine forests, are infested with tsetse flies, vector of trypanosomiosis. With other diseases, as for example those transmitted by ticks, the health issues represent a limitation to livestock expansion. For this reason, the animal population in humid zone is still low and transhumant pastoralists avoid infested areas. With the progress of tsetse and tick control, of medicinal treatment against animal diseases and adaptation of cattle breeds by crossing and selection, many pastoralists from the semi-arid regions enter wetter areas during the dry season to find grass regrowth either after savanna burning or in the wet lowlands. In many regions, this mobility is the cause of a progressive migration: as a consequence of the pastoral resource degradation in sub-arid areas following the dry years and the rapid extension of crop areas, the seasonal movement to the more humid zones is not always followed by a return to drier areas if the pastoralist finds a place to settle. This migration is often combined with a more or less temporal sedentarization. | Mbororo cattle: Transhumant in savannah of Central Cameroon. Also noticable is bush encroachment.

The tsetse eradication or control programmes implemented to open new pasture areas to pastoralists have been followed by the arrival of cultivators and have started new pioneer fronts (Zambezi valley, Cameroon). In some places (for example Burkina Faso), the migration of cultivators opening a pioneer front by land clearing reduces the risk of cattle infection by trypanosomes.

The main environmental issues in relation to mobile grazing are the vegetation change, specially bush encroachment (examples in Central Africa), the dissemination of invasive plants (as Chromolaena odorata, Harungana madagascariensis), the long term consequences of the bushfires on open pastures and the complementively with wildlife.

Proceed to the Matrix of Risks, Opportunities and Underlying Causes

> [Livestock & Environment Toolbox Home]