Grasslands of the World.pdf - Disasters and Conflicts - UNEP

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Grasslands of the world
Kalahari using brush packing with Rhigozum trichotomum. In this highly
mobile sand-dune environment, brush packing results in sand stabilization and
enables seedling establishment.
Sustainable management of the environment and maintenance of
biodiversity
South Africa has ratified the United Nations Conventions that strive to
maintain bio diversity and improve sustainable management of rangelands,
specifically the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United
Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). These conventions
are administered by the Ministry of Environmental Affairs and Tourism , which
supports the assessment of the state of resources . The most recent product of
this programme has been an assessment of degradation and desertification at
a national scale (Hoffman and Ashwell, 2001), which defines the nature and
extent of rangeland transformation.
Seed production
There is formal certification of pasture and fodder seed in South Africa . South
African seed merchants produce approximately 200 t of seed per annum for
sale locally and for export. With the long-term goal of preserving germplasm
(in most cases, as seed) of the entire South African flora, the ARC-Plant
Genetic Resources Division in Pretoria focuses at present on preservation of
seeds of plant species of economic importance. A wide variety of South African
pasture grasses are included in the current accessions, such as species of the
genera Anthephora, Brachiaria , Cenchrus , Cynodon , Panicum , Pennisetum ,
Setaria and Stipagrostis .
RECOMMENDATIONS AND LESSONS LEARNED CONCERNING
SUSTAINABLE GRASSLAND MANAGEMENT
Many of the wild herbivores in South Africa (e.g. blesbok, bontebok, black
wildebeest, blue wildebeest, springbok, Burchell’s zebra and red hartebeest)
create enriched patches which provide highly nutritious fodder throughout
the year (Palmer, Novellie and Lloyd, 1999). These patches form a relatively
small portion of the landscape (Lutge, Hardy and Hatch, 1996) and
researchers (Booysen, 1969) recognized that the remainder of the rangeland
was not used. It was suggested that in order to prevent this “area-selective
grazing ” in livestock production systems , ranchers should fence numerous
paddocks and rotate the domestic animals in a system that maximized the
use of the aboveground primary production. This principle was built into the
legislation to permit government intervention in the primarily white -owned
ranches . This intervention, which provided subsidies to farmers for fencing,
dam construction and the erection of water points , encouraged ranchers to
develop their farms . In the process, the government provided the rancher