This article looks at the changes which are taking place in the Syrian semi-nomadic bedouin flocks' feeding and migration patterns, and the historical reasons for these changes. Most of the discussion will focus on three steppe-based villages in northern Syria, where the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) undertook a three-year survey between 1978 and 1981, and where a follow-up study was done this year.

Extensive grazing is the predominant form of land use on at least a quarter of the world’s land surface, in which livestock are raised on food that comes mainly from rangelands. Extensive grazing differs from crop or forestry production, in which the produce remains in situ whilst growing. Evaluation for extensive grazing, unlike that for cropping or forestry, must take into account the production of both grazing forage, termed primary production, and the livestock that feed on this forage, termed secondary production.

Ever since colonial administrators and western trained scientists became involved in sub-Saharan Africa in the early 20th century and were faced with the task of governing countries where livestock production was a major economic enterprise, the proper utilisation of rangelands became a major concern. While during most of the colonial era devastating epidemics (like rinderpest and pleuropneumonia) kept the growth of livestock populations in check, during the 1950s and 1960s regional campaigns of eradicating these major cattle diseases created a continuous increase in livestock numbers.

This article suggests that communual rangeland management policies in Botswana and Zimbabwe are based on incorrect technical assumptions about the stability of semiarid rangelands, the nature of rangeland degradation, and the benefits of destocking. Consequently, inappropriate policies, stressing the need to destock and stabilise the rangelands, are pursued.Acknowledgement of the great instability but intrinsic resilience of rangeland would encourage the Governments to more favourable regard the opportunistic stocking strategies of the agro-pastoralists of the Communual Areas.

In their recent paper, de Leeuw and Tothill (1990) discussed the shortcomings of estimating carrying capacity (CC) of pastoral systems in Africa. They noted the difficulty of determining available forage per animal due to high annual and spatial variability in plant production, seasonal changes in forage quantity and quality, livestock species mix, and the use of supplemental feeds.

This document contains a collection of critical comments by experts working in the field of pastoralism with regard to several PDN papers.

It is clear from the failure of our efforts in many countries to halt the desertification process - deserts are now advancing at a rate of nearly 15,000,000 acres a year worldwide (Worrall 1984) (that something was missing in our knowledge of the problem). Four discoveries have been made that enabled us to design a simple holistic model to manage resources successfully in a sustained and economic manner.

This article begins with an investigation into woodland management in Mali and moves onto a discussion of some of the fundamental practical problems associated with a major part of forest policy in Mali.