Africa’s grasslands cover a huge area and are probably what most people imagine when they think of the continent – vast plains teeming with wildlife.
But beyond the famous tourist reserves, grasslands are also vital areas for people. In Kenya, for example, they support 60 per cent of the livestock as well as 70 per cent of wildlife outside of protected areas.
But in some areas, overgrazing and climate change-related droughts are resulting in degradation of these ecosystems, leading to both conflict with species such as elephants, giraffes and lions as well as conflict between the people who use them.
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Researchers from the nature NGO Conservation International tested whether grassland restoration reduced these conflicts for the benefit of both people and wildlife.
They surveyed more than 1,500 households in the Chyulu Hills of southern Kenya where 11,000 hectares of grassland have been restored through better livestock management, shrub management and seeding degraded areas.
“As restoration has increased in terms of the number of hectares, there has been a decrease in the number of social and human-wildlife conflicts,” says Camila Donatti, senior director of climate adaption science at Conservation International and the lead author of the resulting paper in Frontiers in Environmental Science.
Donatti believes this is happening because the increased availability of resources – grass, essentially – helps to minimise competition for them. "In the case of elephants, we believe they are less likely to rely on crops if they have enough to eat in the grasslands,” she says.
By increasing the area available, conflict with carnivores such as lions and spotted hyenas is also reduced because the chances of encounters between them and herders’ cattle or goats are less likely. “And if there is more space and resources for pastoralists to use and explore, they are less likely to compete with other pastoralists,” Donatti adds.
With increasing frequency of droughts across many parts of Africa, managing grasslands will become ever more vital in the years to come.
Droughts cause encroachment of woody vegetation (because they have more access to water as a result of deeper roots) – to the detriment of both people and wildlife.
Main image credit: Giraffes and Nairobi Skyline in Kenya/Getty
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