Opportunistic and conservative pastoral strategies: Some economic arguments

Adapting livestock management to spatio-temporal heterogeneity in semi-arid rangelands

“…We gained a deeper understanding of underlying principles that lead to the observed pattern on the landscape scale. Moreover, these new insights can be incorporated into well-established discussions on rangeland management, such as the benefit of adaptive stocking rules (Campbell et al, 2006;Sandford and Scoones, 2006).…”

“…Regarding the latter adaptive movement patterns are expected to support high livestock numbers even in dry years (Stafford Smith, 1996). Although, several authors stress the importance of both management components (Laca, 2009;Vetter, 2005;Noy-Meir, 1981), opinions on their practical relevance are contradictory (Briske et al, 2014(Briske et al, , 2008Teague et al, 2013;Brown and Kothmann, 2009;Campbell et al, 2006;Sandford and Scoones, 2006;Illius and O'Connor, 1999;Savory and Butterfield, 1998). Thus, there is no clear evidence for an advantage of adaptation in either stocking or rotation rules.…”

“…These systems differ in their way of adapting the amount and the spatial distribution of livestock to given environmental variabilities. First, there are basically two approaches of stocking rules (Campbell et al, 2006;Sandford and Scoones, 2006): (i) Non-adaptive, constant rules that aim at maintaining a predefined livestock number and (ii) adaptive (also called opportunistic or tracking) rules that aim at varying livestock numbers to track temporally variable forage supply. Secondly, the spatial livestock distribution considerably influences primary production.…”

Applying Resilience Thinking to Questions of Policy for Pastoralist Systems: Lessons from the Gabra of Northern Kenya

“…A viable alternative would almost certainly bear many similarities to traditional pastoralism. For example, for the kinds of highly variable climates in which nomadic pastoralists live, a system in which livestock numbers do not fluctuate is not desirable, and perhaps not even feasible (Sandford and Scoones 2006). The alternative, therefore, would be a system in which livestock numbers go up and down, but with a reduction of the human suffering and loss of capital that drought-induced livestock deaths currently entail.…”

Development Process Resilience and Sustainable Development: Insights from the Drylands of Eastern Africa

“…Relief programs that directly or indirectly prevent livestock deaths or that quickly restock pastoralists after drought-related losses may in some cases have the unintended effect of undermining the feedback between livestock assets and rangeland health and may contribute to environmental degradation and an overall decline in the productivity of livestock keeping. For such reasons, it has been suggested that a pastoralist system in which livestock numbers do not fluctuate may be neither feasible nor desirable (Sandford and Scoones 2006). Using livestock per household as an indicator of system resilience, therefore, necessitates finding not only a lower threshold below which households cannot continue to earn a livelihood from pastoralism, but also an upper threshold above which environmental degradation occurs.…”