The relationship between herders and trees in space and time in northern Cameroon

Abstract

Extensive herding is an important activity in northern Cameroon, in terms of both the local social economy and local land management. However, this activity is strongly linked to the availability and accessibility of fodder resources. Due to territorial processes, such as land clearance and wood harvesting, this resource is receding and pasturelands are becoming fragmented. Herders are facing new challenges to secure their livelihoods, and, in this context, fodder trees are emerging as a key resource, allowing herds to subsist up to the end of the dry season. Increasingly, trees are playing a significant part in the herders’ strategies to feed their herds in time and space and to ‘root’ their activities to particular lands. This trend requires an analysis of the importance of fodder trees in the definition of territorial strategies operated by herders in northern Cameroon, in the context of various herding systems (nomadic herding, agro herding using transhumance, and settled agro herding). A discussion of herding strategies needed to address the decreasing access to fodder resources highlights the problems of current extensive herding systems and leads to proposed alternatives.

Shift in herders’ territorialities from regional to local scale: the political ecology of pastoral herding in western Burkina Faso

“…Transhumant herds usually contain about 100 individuals. Their movements are sufficiently regular from year to year (Gautier et al 2005;Brottem et al 2014) to generate stable herders' territorialities. Mobile herders' territories are networks made up of nodes (with the home territory and transhumance territories) with links between these nodes (the transhumance route): they can be conceptualized as reticular territories.…”

Effect of feeding some West African browse foliages on growth and carcass composition in sheep

“…A. Juss. (Table 1) are the most commonly used multipurpose species in the traditional livestock management system in the sub-humid zone of West Africa (Bayer 1990;Gautier et al 2005;Ouédraogo-Koné et al 2006). In the traditional system sheep are usually grazed together with cattle and the flock size varies between 20 and 60 heads.…”

“…Livestock farmers are increasingly focusing interest on multipurpose trees as inexpensive alternative sources of protein, when feeds are scarce or inaccessible, especially during the dry season (Gautier et al 2005). Afzelia africana Sm., Pterocarpus erinaceus Poir and Khaya senegalensis (Desv.)…”

An Integrated Approach to Modeling Grazing Pressure in Pastoral Systems: The Case of the Logone Floodplain (Cameroon)

“…By following herds with a GPS, placing collars on animals, or giving GPS devices to herders, researchers have been able to describe daily herd movements in African pastoral systems (Adriansen and Nielsen 2005;Butt 2009;Butt et al 2009;Gautier et al 2005;Sonneveld et al 2009;Turner and Hiernaux 2002). Several studies have measured the effectiveness of using GPS and GIS technologies to understand the grazing behavior of animals (Barbari et al 2006;Turner and Hiernaux 2002).…”