Livestock and wildlife in the environment - diversity in pastoral ecosystems of East Africa
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In this presentation we have chosen to refer to ‘livestock IN the environment’ rather than ‘livestock AND the environment’, emphasising that livestock is not separate from, and dichotomous to, the environment, but rather one intrinsic component, and a tool for its management. Our paper presents a perspective on livestock and wildlife as components of environment in pastoral areas of East Africa. Using examples from Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, it describes how the livestock component interacts, b oth positively and negatively, with other important elements of this environment, and especially with wildlife. By ‘wildlife’ we mean the spectrum of living, non-domesticated species, both plant and animal, now commonly referred to as biodiversity. Yet despite this modern and comprehensive definition of wildlife, issues and conflicts between livestock and wildlife as land uses are frequently centered on ungulates and other large mammals, which share ecological niches with livestock species, and access to the range and vegetation which support all of them. Some recent publications, and advocacy groups, stress that wildlife conservation has robbed pastoralists of a significant part of their traditional range. But with the pressures of various other forms of land use increasing, particularly settled agriculture and subdivision of pastoral lands, pastoralists and wildlife managers in East Africa find themselves forced into an uneasy alliance. In general, it could be said that pas toralism and wildlife both have first-order conflicts (fundamental incompatibility) with intensive agriculture, whereas they only have second-order conflicts (some constraints to compatibility) with each other. Given these conditions, a strategy of some pastoralist and conservation groups is to: combine the political and economic forces of pastoralism and wildlife conservation to restrict the expansion of agriculture into certain areas (including tracking the use of subsidies and land use p olicies leading to conversion of inappropriate lands from pastoral to agricultural use); try to minimize and mitigate the second-order conflicts which exist between pastoralism and wildlife management, such as predation, disease and grazing competition; try to maximize the positive and complementary aspects of pastoralism and conservation such as spreading economic risk and maintaining opportunities for ecological and cultural diversity.