Forestry & Forest Sciences · Forest Protection, Wildlife & Rangelands · also Range Management, Silvopasture and Grazing, Pasture and Rangeland Management
Managing grazing lands and grazing within forests: range ecology, carrying capacity, grazing systems and the restoration of degraded rangelands. Fodder crop production is in the Veterinary track (fodder-production-grassland).
In the exams: ICAR AIEEA-PG Group 09 (rangelands); Society for Range Management certification (USA); grazing-regulation topics in state forest service exams
Rangelands are the grasslands, shrublands, savannas, deserts and alpine meadows where the vegetation is mainly grasses, forbs and shrubs and where the main land use is grazing by domestic and wild animals. They cover a very large part of the earth's land, support hundreds of millions of pastoral people and much of the world's livestock, store large amounts of soil carbon, and hold distinctive biodiversity. In India, grazing lands include permanent pastures and village commons, the grasslands of the Himalaya, the Deccan and the Thar, the terai and shola grasslands, and above all forests, which provide grazing and fodder for a large share of the country's livestock. For Indian foresters, grazing is one of the most important and difficult management issues: it supports rural livelihoods but, if unregulated, prevents forest regeneration, degrades soils and fuels fire.
This subject covers the rangelands of the world and their extent; range ecology and plant responses to grazing; range condition and trend assessment; carrying capacity and stocking rate; grazing systems; grazing in forests and its regulation; fodder trees and lopping; range improvement and reseeding; and pastoral communities and common property rangelands. Silvopastoral systems are described in agroforestry-systems-design and tree management for fodder in agroforestry-management-economics; habitat management for wild herbivores in wildlife-management-protected-areas; restoration of degraded lands and invasive species control in restoration-difficult-sites; and forest grazing rights in forest-policy-law-governance. Fodder crop production on farms is covered in the Veterinary track.
The manual is written for students preparing for the ICAR AIEEA-PG forestry paper, state forest service examinations that test grazing regulation, and the Society for Range Management's certification, and for foresters, range managers and pastoral development staff. Figures for areas, livestock numbers and forage production vary between sources and years and are given as approximate values.
The Society for Range Management defines rangeland as land on which the indigenous vegetation (climax or natural potential) is predominantly grasses, grass-like plants, forbs or shrubs, and which is managed as a natural ecosystem. Rangelands include natural grasslands, savannas, shrublands, many deserts, tundra, alpine communities, marshes and wet meadows. Pasture, by contrast, usually means land sown with introduced forage species and managed more intensively. Rangelands occur mainly where low or highly variable rainfall, cold, shallow soils or frequent fire prevent forests from developing, or where forests have been cleared and grazing and fire maintain open vegetation.
Estimates of the global extent of rangelands vary with definitions, but they are commonly said to cover roughly 40 to 50 percent of the earth's land surface. The main types are tropical and subtropical savannas, such as those of Africa and northern Australia; temperate grasslands, such as the steppes of Central Asia, the prairies of North America and the pampas of South America; shrublands and deserts, such as those of the American Southwest, Australia and the Sahel; Mediterranean shrublands; and tundra and alpine rangelands, such as the Tibetan plateau. Rangelands support many large wild herbivores, a large share of the world's livestock and an estimated several hundred million pastoral and agropastoral people, and they store a substantial part of the world's soil carbon.
India's land-use statistics record about 10 million hectares, roughly 3 percent of the reporting area, as permanent pastures and other grazing lands, but grazing actually occurs far more widely: on village commons, fallows, wastelands, forest land and, seasonally, crop fields. India has one of the largest livestock populations in the world; the 20th Livestock Census (2019) counted about 536 million livestock, along with a large poultry population. Much of the grazing pressure therefore falls on forests and commons.
Dabadghao and Shankarnarayan (1973) classified India's grasslands into five major grass cover types based on dominant grasses and climate: the Sehima-Dichanthium type of the peninsular plateau and central India; the Dichanthium-Cenchrus-Lasiurus type of the arid and semi-arid north-west, including western Rajasthan; the Phragmites-Saccharum-Imperata type of the moist Gangetic plains, the terai and the North-east; the Themeda-Arundinella type of the humid hills, including the Himalayan foothills and Western Ghats; and the temperate-alpine type of the high Himalaya. Notable grasslands include the alpine meadows (bugyals) of Uttarakhand, the shola-grassland mosaic of the Western Ghats, the Banni grasslands of Kutch, the terai grasslands of the Himalayan foothills, and the semi-arid grasslands that support the great Indian bustard and blackbuck. Many of these are treated as wastelands and lost to cultivation, plantations and invasive species.
Rangelands worldwide face degradation through overgrazing, cultivation of marginal land, woody plant encroachment, invasive species, altered fire regimes and climate change. In many semi-arid regions, shrubs and trees have spread into grasslands over the past century, a process called woody encroachment, driven by heavy grazing that removes grass fuel and so reduces fire, by fire suppression, and possibly by rising carbon dioxide favouring woody C3 plants. In India, invasive Prosopis juliflora has transformed grasslands such as Banni, and Lantana has spread in forest grasslands. Desertification, land degradation in drylands resulting from climatic variations and human activities, affects large parts of rangelands; its assessment and reversal are discussed in restoration-difficult-sites. Rangeland soils hold large carbon stocks that can be lost through degradation or partly rebuilt through better management, although the size of achievable gains is debated.
Rangelands provide forage for livestock and wildlife, water from upland catchments, soil carbon storage, biodiversity, recreation and cultural values. Grasslands are often undervalued in conservation compared with forests; some, such as India's savanna grasslands, have been planted with trees in the mistaken belief that they are degraded forests, harming the species that depend on open habitats. Managing rangelands well is therefore both a livelihood and a conservation issue.
Plants respond to grazing through avoidance (making themselves less available or less palatable, through spines, low growth forms, tough tissues or chemical defences) and tolerance (the ability to regrow after defoliation). Grasses are well adapted to tolerate grazing because their growing points (apical meristems) remain near the ground in the vegetative stage, below grazing height, and because intercalary meristems at the base of leaves allow leaves to continue elongating after their tips are removed. Regrowth depends on remaining leaf area for photosynthesis, active meristems and stored carbohydrates in stem bases and roots. When the growing point is elevated, as in stems that are elongating towards flowering, grazing can remove it and force the plant to regrow from basal buds, which is slower.
Heavy, repeated defoliation reduces root growth, depletes reserves, lowers vigour and seed production and eventually kills plants. Root growth may stop for some time after removal of a large share of the leaf area, which is the basis of the widely quoted rule of thumb 'take half, leave half'. The timing of grazing matters as much as intensity: grazing during the active growing season, especially when plants are building reserves or setting seed, harms them more than grazing during dormancy.
Grazing changes plant communities. Dyksterhuis (1949) classified range plants by their response to grazing pressure: decreasers, which are palatable climax species that decline under heavy grazing; increasers, which are climax species that increase at first as decreasers decline, because they are less palatable or more grazing-tolerant, and later decline under continued heavy grazing; and invaders, which are species not present in the climax community that colonise as the range deteriorates. Under heavy grazing, palatable perennial grasses give way to unpalatable grasses, annuals, forbs and woody shrubs, bare ground increases and erosion follows.
The traditional Clementsian model viewed range vegetation as moving along a single successional path towards a climax, with grazing pushing it back and rest allowing it to recover. Since the late 1980s, state-and-transition models, proposed by Westoby, Walker and Noy-Meir (1989), have described rangelands as having multiple stable states, with transitions between them triggered by grazing, fire, drought or management, and thresholds beyond which recovery requires active intervention, such as after soil loss or shrub encroachment. These models are now widely used in ecological site descriptions.
Ellis and Swift (1988) argued that in arid rangelands with highly variable rainfall (often taken as a coefficient of variation above about 30 to 33 percent), livestock numbers are kept below the level at which they could degrade vegetation by periodic droughts, so vegetation is driven more by rainfall than by grazing. These are called non-equilibrium systems; in them, mobility and opportunistic use, as practised by many pastoralists, are appropriate strategies. In wetter, more stable rangelands (equilibrium systems), grazing pressure strongly influences vegetation and conventional carrying capacity concepts apply more directly. Most rangelands lie somewhere between these extremes. Fire, often set by pastoralists to remove old growth and stimulate fresh grass, is another major ecological factor; its role is discussed in forest-fire-science. Many tropical grasses use the C4 photosynthetic pathway, which is efficient in hot, sunny conditions.
Range condition describes the present state of the vegetation of a site relative to its potential. In the quantitative climax approach developed by Dyksterhuis (1949), condition is the percentage of the present vegetation, by weight, that consists of species belonging to the climax community of that site, with limits on how much of each increaser species can be counted. Four condition classes are recognised: excellent (76 to 100 percent of the climax composition), good (51 to 75 percent), fair (26 to 50 percent) and poor (0 to 25 percent). For example, if a site's current production consists of 30 percent decreasers, 25 percent increasers of which only 15 percent may be counted under the site's guide, and the rest invaders, the score is 30 + 15 = 45 percent, fair condition.
Because condition defined this way assumes a single climax, the US agencies moved towards the concepts of ecological sites (areas with a particular potential plant community and response to management), similarity index (how closely the present vegetation resembles a reference state) and rangeland health. Rangeland health assessment, as in the guide by Pellant and colleagues, evaluates 17 indicators grouped under three attributes: soil and site stability, hydrologic function and biotic integrity, each rated by its departure from reference conditions.
Vegetation is measured with standard methods. Cover, the proportion of ground covered by plants, litter, rock or bare soil, is estimated with line-intercept transects, point frames, step-point methods or quadrat estimates. Frequency is the proportion of quadrats in which a species occurs. Density is the number of plants per unit area, useful for shrubs and bunchgrasses. Production, the amount of forage produced, is estimated by clipping and weighing vegetation in quadrats, drying it, and converting to kilograms per hectare; for example, if 0.25 m2 quadrats yield an average of 30 g of dry forage, production is 30 / 0.25 = 120 g/m2, or 1,200 kg/ha. Double sampling combines quick visual estimates in many quadrats with clipping in a subset to calibrate them. Utilisation, the proportion of the current year's forage removed by grazing, is measured with paired caged and uncaged plots, stubble height, or height-weight relationships. Photo points, repeat photographs from fixed locations, document change simply. Remote sensing indices such as NDVI track vegetation greenness over large areas and years.
Range trend is the direction of change in condition over time: upward (improving), downward (deteriorating) or static. It is judged from repeated measurements of composition, cover and soil surface condition, and from indicators such as the vigour and reproduction of decreaser species, the presence of seedlings of desirable species, the amount of litter, and signs of erosion such as pedestals, rills and gullies. Trend is often more useful for management than a single condition rating, because it shows whether current grazing is sustainable. Monitoring plans specify sites, methods and frequency, and should be kept simple enough to be repeated reliably.
Carrying capacity, or grazing capacity, is the maximum stocking rate that can be sustained over a period without damaging vegetation, soils or related resources. Stocking rate is the number of animals, or animal units, on a given area for a specified time, for example animal unit months per hectare. Stocking density is the number of animals per unit area at a particular moment, which can be very high for short periods in rotational systems even when the overall stocking rate is moderate. Stocking rate is generally regarded as the single most important grazing management decision, more important than the grazing system.
To compare animals of different sizes and species, range managers use the animal unit (AU). In US practice, one animal unit is a mature cow of about 450 kg (1,000 lb), with or without a calf, consuming about 12 kg of forage dry matter a day, roughly 2.5 to 3 percent of body weight. An animal unit month (AUM) is the forage needed by one AU for a month, about 350 to 360 kg of dry matter. Other animals are converted with animal unit equivalents based on their forage intake; commonly used values are around 0.2 for a sheep and 0.15 for a goat, though values vary with body size and source. In India, the adult cattle unit is used similarly. For example, a herd of 100 cows, 200 sheep (at 0.2) and 150 goats (at 0.15) equals 100 + 40 + 22.5 = 162.5 AU.
Carrying capacity depends on forage quality as well as quantity. Quality is described by crude protein, digestibility and fibre content. Young, actively growing grass is highly digestible and protein-rich, while mature, dry grass is fibrous and low in protein, often below the level of about 7 percent crude protein below which rumen microbes are limited and intake falls. Animals therefore lose weight on abundant but poor dry-season forage unless they receive protein supplements, legumes or tree fodder. Animals also select their diet: cattle are mainly grazers of grass, sheep select forbs and short grass, goats browse shrubs and tree leaves, and camels browse tall shrubs and trees. Mixed herds can use a range more fully than a single species, and the forage available to each species, not the total, determines how many of each the range can support. Wild herbivores share the forage and must be allowed for in calculations, particularly in and around protected areas.
Carrying capacity is estimated from the forage available and the forage demand. Usable forage equals total forage production multiplied by a proper use factor, the share of production that can be removed without harming the vegetation; 50 percent ('take half, leave half') is a common starting point for productive rangelands, with lower values, such as 25 to 35 percent, for arid rangelands or sensitive sites, to allow for trampling, wildlife, losses and drought. Demand equals the number of animals times their daily intake times the length of the grazing period.
For example, 200 hectares producing 1,200 kg of dry forage per hectare, with a proper use factor of 0.5, provide 120,000 kg of usable forage. At 12 kg per AU per day for a year, this supports 120,000 / (12 x 365) = 27 AU. Expressed in AUM, the same area provides about 120,000 / 360 = 333 AUM. If instead 500 hectares produce 800 kg/ha, with a proper use factor of 0.4 for a 180-day grazing season, carrying capacity is 500 x 800 x 0.4 / (12 x 180) = 74 AU for that season. Harvest efficiency, the proportion of forage actually eaten by animals, is lower than utilisation because of trampling and waste.
Carrying capacity varies between years with rainfall, so stocking should be adjusted to the forage actually produced, or set conservatively to allow for dry years. In variable climates, flexible stocking, adjusted through sales, movement or supplementary feed, is more sustainable than a fixed number. Distribution of grazing matters as much as total numbers: animals concentrate near water, on gentle slopes and in preferred sites, overgrazing them while leaving distant or steep areas lightly used. Water development, salt placement, herding and fencing improve distribution.
A grazing system is a planned schedule of grazing and rest for different units of a range. Continuous grazing (season-long grazing) keeps animals on the same area throughout the grazing season; it is simple and allows animals to select their diet, but preferred plants and areas can be repeatedly grazed. Rotational grazing divides the range into paddocks grazed in turn, so that each paddock rests while others are grazed. Deferred grazing delays grazing of an area until after key forage plants have set seed, allowing them to build reserves and reproduce. Deferred-rotation grazing rotates the deferment among paddocks so that each is deferred in turn over a series of years. Rest-rotation grazing, developed by Hormay for the US Forest Service, rests one or more units for a full year in rotation, so that each unit periodically recovers fully. Seasonal grazing uses different areas in different seasons, as in transhumance between summer alpine pastures and winter lowlands. Short-duration or high-intensity, low-frequency systems use many paddocks grazed briefly at high stocking density; holistic planned grazing, promoted by Allan Savory, is a widely known version.
In rotational systems, rest periods depend on the number of paddocks and the grazing period in each: with one herd and n paddocks each grazed for g days, each paddock rests for (n - 1) x g days. For example, four paddocks each grazed for seven days give a rest period of 21 days. Rest periods should match plant regrowth rates, which vary with season and rainfall; fixed calendars can give too short a rest when growth is slow and too long when it is fast.
Grazing systems have been promoted with strong claims, but experimental evidence is more modest. A review by Briske and colleagues (2008) of experiments in North American rangelands found that rotational grazing did not consistently produce greater plant or animal production than continuous grazing at the same stocking rate, and that stocking rate had larger effects than the grazing system. Claims that high-density holistic grazing can reverse desertification and greatly increase carrying capacity are not supported by most controlled studies, although some ranchers report benefits that may come from closer attention to management and adaptive decision-making rather than the system itself. Rotational and deferred systems remain useful where they allow rest for key plants, protect sensitive areas, improve distribution or fit management goals. The choice of system should follow from objectives, plant ecology, animal needs, water and fencing costs, and labour.
In practice, a manager choosing a grazing system works through a few questions. What are the objectives: livestock production, recovery of key plants, wildlife habitat, fuel reduction or a combination? Which plants are key, and when are they most sensitive to grazing? How much water and fencing exist or can be afforded, and how much labour is available for moving animals? How variable is rainfall, and how will stocking be adjusted in a drought? Once a system is chosen, monitoring of utilisation, plant vigour and animal performance shows whether it is working, and the plan is adjusted. In Indian forests and commons, where fencing is rare, systems are usually implemented by herding, social fencing and rotational closure of blocks agreed with village committees rather than by paddocks.
Grazing can also be used as a tool, for example to reduce fuel loads, control weeds with goats, create habitat structure for wildlife, or maintain open grassland that would otherwise become scrub. Targeted grazing applies specific livestock at specific times and intensities to achieve such vegetation goals. In protected areas, the presence of livestock may be incompatible with wildlife objectives, as discussed in wildlife-management-protected-areas.
In India a large share of the livestock population grazes in forests at least part of the year, and forest grazing far exceeds the carrying capacity of many forests. Uncontrolled grazing damages forests in several ways. Browsing and trampling destroy seedlings and saplings, so regeneration fails and forests gradually open and degrade; palatable species are selectively eliminated. Trampling compacts soil, reducing infiltration and increasing runoff and erosion, especially on slopes. Graziers often set fire to forests to stimulate fresh grass, which damages regeneration and soil, as discussed in forest-fire-science. Lopping of trees for fodder, if excessive, weakens and kills them. Livestock spread invasive weeds such as Lantana in their dung and on their coats, compete with wild herbivores for forage, and transmit diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease, anthrax and rinderpest (now eradicated) to wildlife. Overgrazing is one of the main causes of forest degradation recorded in India's forest working plans.
The National Forest Policy of 1988 recognised that grazing in forests should be regulated with the involvement of communities, that special attention should be given to protecting regeneration areas, that grazing fees should be levied to discourage large herds of unproductive cattle, and that the carrying capacity of forests should be respected. Forest laws give states powers to regulate grazing. Under the Indian Forest Act, 1927, rights of pasture are settled during forest settlement, and states may make rules for grazing in reserved and protected forests; unauthorised grazing is an offence. Many states have grazing rules or policies that classify forests by grazing intensity, close regeneration areas to grazing for a period of years, specify permit systems and fees, and limit numbers per household. The Forest Rights Act, 2006 recognises community rights of grazing and access of pastoralist and nomadic communities to seasonal resources (discussed in forest-policy-law-governance), which must be considered in regulation.
Effective regulation combines several measures: closing regeneration and plantation areas to grazing until saplings are beyond the reach of animals; rotational closure of forest blocks so that each recovers periodically; cut-and-carry systems, in which grass and tree fodder are harvested from closed areas and carried to stall-fed animals, as practised under joint forest management in many villages; limiting numbers and types of animals, since goats browse more heavily on woody plants and camels on tall shrubs; providing alternatives such as fodder plantations, improved pastures on village commons and crop residues; improving livestock breeds so that fewer, more productive animals are kept; and working with village forest committees to agree and enforce rules. Social fencing, in which the community agrees to keep animals out, has often proved more effective and cheaper than physical fencing. Strict bans without alternatives tend to fail and create conflict.
Tree and shrub fodder is especially important in the dry season and in winter, when grasses are scarce and of low quality. Leaves of many fodder trees contain more crude protein than mature grass, often in the range of roughly 12 to 20 percent of dry matter, and supply minerals; they are also available from deep-rooted trees when the ground layer is dry. In the Himalaya and in arid regions, livestock depend heavily on lopped tree fodder for part of the year. Tree fodder can be fed fresh, wilted or as leaf meal, and mixed with grass or crop residues.
Important fodder trees and shrubs in India include, in the western Himalaya, Grewia optiva (bhimal), Celtis australis (khirak), Bauhinia variegata (kachnar), Morus alba (mulberry), Ficus species such as F. roxburghii and F. auriculata, and the banj oak (Quercus leucotrichophora), whose loss from overlopping has been a concern in Uttarakhand; in arid regions, Prosopis cineraria (khejri, whose leaves are called loong), Ailanthus excelsa, Ziziphus nummularia (whose leaves are called pala), Acacia nilotica (pods) and Salvadora; and in the semi-arid and humid tropics, Leucaena leucocephala, Albizia lebbeck, Hardwickia binata, Azadirachta indica, Gliricidia sepium, Sesbania grandiflora, Artocarpus heterophyllus and Erythrina. Leguminous fodder trees improve diets because of their higher protein, and many fix nitrogen.
Some tree fodders contain anti-nutritional factors: tannins, which in moderate amounts can protect protein from rumen degradation but in high amounts reduce intake and digestibility (as in oak leaves); mimosine in Leucaena, which is toxic to ruminants without the rumen microbes that degrade it; and other compounds. Mixing tree fodder with other feeds, limiting the proportion in the diet, and wilting can reduce problems.
Lopping removes branches or parts of the crown for fodder without felling the tree. Excessive and repeated lopping reduces growth, prevents flowering and seed production, and can kill trees; overlopped oaks and other species in the Himalaya are a familiar sight. Good practice includes lopping only part of the crown at a time, leaving the leading shoot and enough foliage for the tree to recover; lopping on a rotation, such as alternate years or longer cycles depending on species and site; lopping in the season of fodder scarcity and of tree dormancy; and using clean cuts that do not tear bark. Pollarding and coppicing, described in agroforestry-management-economics, can be managed as sustainable fodder systems. Planting fodder trees on farm boundaries, terrace risers and village commons, as in silvopastoral systems described in agroforestry-systems-design, reduces pressure on forest trees.
Fodder banks, dense plantings of fodder trees and shrubs that are cut regularly, can supply large amounts of high-protein fodder from small areas near villages. Their success depends on protection while young, regular cutting at a suitable height and interval, and their integration with grass and crop residues in the household's feeding calendar.
Range improvement aims to increase forage production and quality, soil protection and other range values. The first and usually cheapest step is to correct grazing management: reducing stocking rates to carrying capacity, deferring or resting degraded areas, and improving livestock distribution. Many degraded rangelands recover substantially when grazing pressure is reduced, if desirable perennial plants and soil remain. Where they do not, because the range has crossed a threshold, active improvement is needed.
Reseeding introduces adapted forage species where desirable plants are too few to recover naturally. Grasses commonly used in India include Cenchrus ciliaris (anjan or buffel grass) and Cenchrus setigerus (birdwood grass) in arid and semi-arid areas, Lasiurus sindicus (sewan) in the Thar desert, Dichanthium annulatum (marvel grass), Chrysopogon fulvus, Sehima nervosum, Panicum maximum (guinea grass) and Pennisetum pedicellatum (deenanath grass); legumes such as Stylosanthes hamata and S. scabra, Clitoria ternatea and Macroptilium atropurpureum improve forage quality and fix nitrogen. Species are chosen to suit rainfall, soil and grazing use. Seed is sown at the start of the monsoon, often in furrows or by broadcasting on prepared ground, sometimes pelleted, at seed rates that depend on species and seed quality; rooted slips of perennial grasses can be planted on ridges. For example, sowing 50 hectares at 5 kg of seed per hectare requires 250 kg of seed. Newly seeded areas must be protected from grazing until plants are well established, usually for at least one growing season. The ICAR-Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute at Jhansi and the Central Arid Zone Research Institute at Jodhpur have developed seed and pasture technologies for Indian conditions.
Soil and water conservation increases forage production on sloping and dry rangeland: contour furrows, staggered trenches, pitting and contour bunds capture runoff and increase infiltration. Brush and weed control removes woody shrubs or invasive species that have increased under overgrazing, by mechanical clearing, prescribed burning, herbicides or browsing, followed by reseeding; control of Prosopis juliflora, Lantana and other invasives is discussed in restoration-difficult-sites. Fertiliser application, especially phosphorus to legume-based pastures, can increase production on suitable sites but is often uneconomic on extensive rangelands. Water development, such as small ponds and troughs, and fencing improve distribution and allow rotation. Silvopasture, combining fodder trees with improved grasses, is often the most productive use of degraded common and forest lands, as described in agroforestry-systems-design.
Improvement projects should be evaluated by their costs and benefits and by whether improvements persist. Many past pasture development projects on village commons in India failed because communities were not involved, protection lapsed, and grazing pressure returned. Where communities controlled access and shared the benefits, as in some joint forest management and watershed projects, pasture productivity and grass harvests increased substantially.
Pastoralism is a livelihood based mainly on herding livestock on natural pastures, often with seasonal mobility. Mobile pastoralists move herds to follow forage and water, which allows them to use variable and patchy resources efficiently, especially in non-equilibrium rangelands. Forms include nomadism, with no permanent base; transhumance, with regular seasonal movement between fixed areas, such as between summer high pastures and winter lowlands; and agropastoralism, combining herding with farming.
India has many pastoral communities. They include the Gujjars and Bakarwals of Jammu and Kashmir, who move with buffaloes, sheep and goats between the plains and alpine pastures; the Van Gujjars, forest-dwelling buffalo herders of the Shivalik foothills; the Gaddis of Himachal Pradesh, transhumant sheep and goat herders; the Changpa of Ladakh's Changthang plateau, who rear Changthangi goats for pashmina wool; the Rebari or Raika of Rajasthan and Gujarat, known for camels, sheep and cattle; the Maldharis of Gujarat, including those of Banni and Gir; the Toda of the Nilgiris, buffalo herders; and the Kurumbas and Dhangars of the Deccan, sheep herders. Pastoralists face shrinking grazing land, the spread of irrigation and cultivation into former grazing areas, restrictions on access to forests and protected areas, sedentarisation, conflict with farmers, and the loss of migration routes, as well as the decline of some livestock breeds. Their knowledge of animal husbandry, forage plants and seasonal resources is a valuable basis for range management, and indigenous breeds adapted to harsh conditions are an important genetic resource.
Common property resources are resources owned or managed collectively by a defined group, with rules about who may use them and how. They differ from open access resources, which have no effective rules or owners. Hardin's essay 'The Tragedy of the Commons' (1968) argued that individuals sharing a pasture would each add animals until the pasture was ruined, because each gains the full benefit of an extra animal while the cost of overgrazing is shared. Later research, especially by Elinor Ostrom, who received the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009, showed that many communities have managed commons sustainably for long periods, and that Hardin's tragedy describes open access rather than true common property. Ostrom identified design principles shared by long-enduring common-pool resource institutions: clearly defined boundaries; rules congruent with local conditions; collective-choice arrangements allowing users to modify rules; monitoring by users or accountable monitors; graduated sanctions; accessible conflict-resolution mechanisms; minimal recognition by government of the community's right to organise; and, for larger systems, nested enterprises.
Village commons, including grazing lands, community forests, ponds and wastelands, have been important for the rural poor in India, supplying fodder, fuel, food and materials. Studies by N. S. Jodha in the dry regions of India in the 1980s found that the area of common property resources had declined substantially since the 1950s through privatisation, encroachment and government allotment, and that commons contributed a significant share of the income of poor households. Their degradation followed the weakening of traditional management institutions. Approaches to restoring commons include joint forest management, watershed development with user groups, grazing land development by panchayats with rules on access, and recognition of community rights to grazing and to manage community forest resources under the Forest Rights Act. The Banni grasslands of Kutch, where Maldhari pastoralists have sought recognition of community rights, illustrate both the value of pastoral commons and the threats from invasive Prosopis juliflora and land-use change.
For range managers, working with pastoral communities means understanding their knowledge, mobility and institutions; supporting secure access to grazing and migration routes; involving them in setting and enforcing rules; and recognising the ecological role of grazing in maintaining some grasslands. Conflicts between pastoralists and conservation, for example over grazing in protected areas, are best addressed through negotiation, zoning and alternatives rather than exclusion alone.
Learn the definitions of rangeland, carrying capacity, stocking rate and stocking density, Dyksterhuis's decreasers, increasers and invaders and condition classes, state-and-transition and non-equilibrium concepts, the animal unit and AUM, the grazing systems and what evidence shows about them, India's grass cover types, fodder trees by region, reseeding species, and Ostrom's design principles. Practise carrying-capacity and clipping calculations.
As a range officer or project staff member you assess forage and condition, set grazing closures and rotations, work with village committees on grazing rules and cut-and-carry systems, establish pastures and fodder plantations, and resolve conflicts with graziers. Judgement is needed to balance livelihoods with regeneration and to adjust stocking to variable rainfall.
At senior level you frame state grazing policy, integrate pastoral rights under the Forest Rights Act with forest and wildlife management, plan large-scale grassland and silvopasture restoration, and ensure grasslands are not mistakenly afforested. Decisions include grazing fees and permits, protected-area grazing, invasive species control and support for pastoral mobility.
Research questions include grazing effects on vegetation and soils under variable climates, state-and-transition models for Indian grasslands, carbon in rangelands, the ecology of fodder trees and lopping, the effectiveness of grazing systems and community institutions, and pastoral livelihoods and mobility. Rigorous research combines long-term grazing trials, remote sensing, modelling and social science.
Global and Indian extents of rangelands and grazing lands, livestock numbers in forests, animal unit equivalents, proper use factors and fodder nutritive values vary with definitions and sources; figures are approximate and illustrative. State grazing rules differ and are not listed. Fodder crop agronomy and animal nutrition are covered in the Veterinary track; silvopasture design in agroforestry-systems-design; invasive species and degraded land restoration in restoration-difficult-sites; fire in forest-fire-science; and forest rights law in forest-policy-law-governance. The effectiveness of holistic planned grazing is contested and is presented with the evidence.
Original practice questions written to the syllabus and pattern of the exams named in each question's examTags. They are not past papers and do not reproduce any board's questions.
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