Planned grazing improves vegetation and wildlife presence in northern Kenyan pastoral rangelands

Widespread degradation of rangeland ecosystems driven, in part, by poor grazing management practices is a major environmental concern worldwide. Planned grazing management, typically involving high-density short-duration... [ view full abstract ]

Widespread degradation of rangeland ecosystems driven, in part, by poor grazing management practices is a major environmental concern worldwide. Planned grazing management, typically involving high-density short-duration rotational grazing, is widely touted as a tool for promoting sustainable rangelands but this claim is yet to be validated scientifically. Scientific assessment of the efficacy of the planned grazing management is critical given the growing interest in expanding this approach across many rangelands, including African pastoral lands. Here, we assessed the effects of planned grazing management on herbaceous vegetation foliar cover, plant basal gap, species richness and diversity, and wildlife presence across several communal pastoral properties in northern Kenyan rangelands. We measured these attributes across six wide-ranging localities comprising sites where planned grazing management had been ongoing for 2-5 years and adjacent control sites where non-planned, open-access grazing was continuing. We found that herbaceous vegetation foliar cover more than doubled following the implementation of planned grazing management. Similarly, planned grazing markedly increased herbaceous plant species richness and diversity across five of the six sampled localities. Conversely, plant basal gap reduced significantly following planned grazing. We also found that wildlife responded positively to these changes, with the presence of elephants and warthogs increasing significantly following planned grazing. Our findings provide the first scientific evidence of the value of planned grazing management in pastoral rangelands, with broad implications for wildlife conservation, carbon storage, livestock production and pastoral livelihoods.