THE CHALLENGE
The vast and highly biodiverse savannas, grasslands and shrublands of southern Africa are crucial for people and nature. They support more than 50 million indigenous and local pastoralists, offer habitats for iconic wildlife and store large quantities of planet-warming carbon. But half of Africa’s native rangelands are degraded due to encroaching settlements, land tenure policies, climate change and overgrazing. As a result, land degradation and the loss of wildlife are on the rise.
Our solution
The Herding for Health programme — a partnership between Conservation International and Peace Parks Foundation — is a community-driven livestock management model that supports the livelihoods of rural communities living in and around protected areas — while restoring rangelands and conserving biodiversity through herding, capacity building and collective governance. The programme champions community-driven participation, sustainable native rangeland management, integrated disease risk and food safety control, and rural development principles. Herding for Health is underpinned by four key pillars:
One of the key mechanisms in implementing Herding for Health is voluntary stewardship agreements signed with communities as the custodians of the land. Pastoralist communities voluntarily commit to implementing planned grazing of their livestock to minimise overgrazing, remove invasive vegetation that hampers grass growth and water availability, and adopt wildlife-friendly practices, among other measures. In turn, they receive support to improve the quality of their livestock, reduce animal losses from wildlife predators and diseases, and access facilitated livestock markets, among other benefits.
The Herding For Health model was initially developed to address various challenges in nature conservation and community development in areas of high biodiversity importance. Some Herding For Health sites started with the aim of developing a mechanism to address human-wildlife conflict, especially the retaliatory killings of large predators that preyed on livestock. Other sites evolved more around challenging trade barriers.
Africa has the greatest potential for environmental restoration of any continent, offering a key solution to global challenges. The Herding For Health programme taps into this potential, sparking meaningful and transformative change including economic opportunities for communities living next to protected areas where, for instance, foot and mouth disease transmitting from wildlife to livestock is an imminent risk. In addition to addressing site-specific issues, the core of the Herding For Health model aims to support both people and wildlife to thrive through strategic livestock management in a way that restores ecosystem function and halts land degradation.
Our approach
Possibly the simplest yet most effective solution in the Herding For Health toolbox is the deployment of mobile bomas. These two-metre-tall mobile tent cloth enclosures are easy to erect and can hold about 600 cattle at a time. At night, cattle are led into the mobile bomas where they are guarded by a group of trained herders. Lions, leopards and cheetahs will still roam around, smelling and hearing the cattle, but never risk jumping into a boma as they do not know what awaits them on the other side. Since the deployment of mobile bomas, not a single head of cattle that was inside one has been lost to predation. The bomas have an additional function in the landscape. Since they are mobile, they are moved every week, leaving a well-fertilised and trampled spot behind. The soils are subsequently seeded with harvested seeds from recovered grasslands, turning the prior boma spot into a floral biodiversity bank and a force for more rapid rangeland regeneration.
In addition to creating community training and livelihood options, Herding For Health increasingly focuses on job creation and enterprise development. This includes creating cash-for-work programmes that optimise landscape regeneration – by removing harmful invasive species, for instance – or developing value chains from by-products such as wool and leather. Recognising that herding is mostly a male occupation, the Herding For Health programme expanded its operations to include sheep and goat herding The latter being dominated by female herders, the programme now equally targets men and women in the rangelands.
Herding for Health sites
Our vision
To enable the co-existence of people and nature in and around protected areas.
Our mission
To restore rangelands, improve animal health and provide market access — while promoting biodiversity conservation in and around protected areas in Africa.
Herding For Health Cattle Fair: Connecting farmers to markets
