Assessing Interactions between Agriculture, Livestock Grazing and Wildlife Conservation Land Uses: A Historical Example from East Africa

Serengeti’s futures: Exploring land use and land cover change scenarios to craft pathways for meeting conservation and development goals

Rapid land use transformations and increased climatic uncertainties challenge potential sustainable development pathways for communities and wildlife in regions with strong economic reliance on natural resources. In response to the complex causes and consequences of land use change, participatory scenario development approaches have emerged as key tools for analyzing drivers of change to help chart the future of socio-ecological systems. We assess stakeholder perspectives of land use and land cover change (LULCC) and integrate co-produced scenarios of future land cover change with spatial modeling to evaluate how future LULCC in the wider Serengeti ecosystem might align or diverge with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union’s Agenda 2063. Across the wider Serengeti ecosystem, population growth, infrastructural development, agricultural economy, and political will in support of climate change management strategies were perceived to be the key drivers of future LULCC. Under eight scenarios, declines in forest area as a proportion of total land area ranged from 0.1% to 4% in 2030 and from 0.1% to 6% in 2063, with the preservation of forest cover linked to the level of protection provided. Futures with well-demarcated protected areas, sound land use plans, and stable governance were highly desired. In contrast, futures with severe climate change impacts and encroached and degazetted protected areas were considered undesirable. Insights gained from our study are important for guiding pathways toward achieving sustainability goals while recognizing societies’ relationship with nature. The results highlight the usefulness of multi-stakeholder engagement, perspective sharing, and consensus building toward shared socio-ecological goals.

Crop Insurance, a Frugal Innovation in Tanzania, Helps Small Maize Farmers and Contributes to an Emerging Land Market

A land market is emerging in Tanzania, triggered by initiatives to reform land legislation and modernize agriculture through frugal innovations, combining hybrid seeds and weather-based index insurance with the use of mobile telephones. The analysis shows that agricultural modernization can be a driver for an emerging land market. Demand for land increases and because of the liberalization of land rights, land can be bought or leased, something the more successful farmers do. To assess the effects of crop insurance for maize farmers, a frugal innovation, a survey has been carried out in three regions. Two hundred farmers were interviewed using cluster sampling with the villages as sampling units and then selecting households per village. The rural transformation process, driven by innovation, started with the development of an ecosystem and land registration while allowing more private (commercial and non-commercial) initiatives. The triggers are frugal innovations. Crop insurance, combining existing hybrid seeds, with satellite images and mobile telephones, brings about a transformation process and pumps money into the land system. People noticing that hybrid maize works, if you have hybrid seeds, the complementary inputs, and an insurance policy, jump on the band wagon, which leads to more demand for land and contributes to an emerging land market.

Estimating Livestock Grazing Activity in Remote Areas Using Passive Acoustic Monitoring

Grazing has long been recognized as an effective means of modifying natural habitats and, by extension, as a wildlife and protected area management tool, in addition to the obvious economic value it has for pastoral communities. A holistic approach to grazing management requires the estimation of grazing timing, frequency, and season length, as well as the overall grazing intensity. However, traditional grazing monitoring methods require frequent field visits, which can be labor intensive and logistically demanding to implement, especially in remote areas. Questionnaire surveys of farmers are also widely used to collect information on grazing parameters, however there can be concerns regarding the reliability of the data collected. To improve the reliability of grazing data collected and decrease the required labor, we tested for the first time whether a novel combination of autonomous recording units and the semi-automated detection algorithms of livestock vocalizations could provide insight on grazing activity at the selected areas of the Greek Rhodope mountain range. Our results confirm the potential of passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) techniques as a cost-efficient method for acquiring high resolution spatiotemporal data on grazing patterns. Additionally, we evaluate the three algorithms that we developed for detecting cattle, sheep/goat, and livestock bell sounds, and make them available to the broader scientific community. We conclude with suggestions on ways that acoustic monitoring can further contribute to managing legal and illegal grazing, and offer a list of priorities for related future research.