Current Conservation Special Issue on African conservation today - our small contribution on livestock and wildlife

This is a short synopsis of an article we published recently in a stunning edition of Current Conservation. The whole edition (15.3) is brilliant and I think anyone interested in conservation in Africa should have a read!

This is a topic that my co-authors and I have written about before (as well as here and here and plenty more!) and it continues to serve as the foundation of a lot of work we support across East Africa's rangelands.

Fundamentally, as we elucidate in our article, research suggests that by improving the cultural, economic and ecological sustainability of livestock production systems in rangelands (both traditional and commercial production systems), wildlife can also benefit. To achieve this, we need to ensure that livestock and their products can continue to generate significant economic returns; that benefits from ecosystem services and ecotourism are equitably distributed and reach the people who are doing the most to conserve their living resources; and that crucially, the rights, knowledge, and experiences of people living and managing these rangelands are recognised as vital in any conservation activities. Healthy rangelands for people and their livestock can mean healthy rangelands for all.

Without the “place” for wildlife in people’s lives, the “space” created for them may not matter.

In our article we break our argument down by looking at how protected areas cannot be the only solution to conservation challenges in East Africa, how livestock and wildlife face similar threats in East Africa's rangelands, and how local pastoral (or agro-pastoral) people are essential to sustainably managing rangelands. So if you're interested in understanding more about all of that, or if you love beautiful illustrations like the ones in this blog post, then check out the full article in Current Conservation 15.3!

If you're interested in livestock and wildlife coexistence, you might also find this (and this) article I wrote a few months back interesting too!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it with others who might be interested too. If you want to connect, I'm always happy to chat, so get in touch!

For those who might be interested, here are some recent publications:

• Coexistence in an African pastoral landscape: Evidence that livestock and wildlife temporally partition water resources. African Journal of Ecology Connolly, E. et al. 2021
• Defining Pathways towards African Ecological Futures. Sustainability Scheren, P. et al. 2021
• Conserving Africa's wildlife and wildlands through the COVID-19 crisis and beyond. Nature Ecology & Evolution Lindsey, P. et al. 2020
• Incorporating social-ecological complexities into conservation policy. Biological Conservation Brehony, P. et al. 2020
• Conservation from the inside-out: winning space and a place for wildlife in working landscapes. People and Nature Western, D. et al. 2020