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Overgrazing:
A Menace
Khilendra
Basnyat
Overgrazing,
which is the tendency of local human populations to permit animals to graze
freely, without regard to the carrying capacity of range or pasture has become
a menace. This trend has led to the massive destruction of vegetation in some
places, which has caused grave economic loss to the nomadic populations. Apart
from this, overgrazing has turned fertile verdant areas into deserts, a process
termed desertification which is increasing at an asymptotic rate.
In the past
decades, grazing animals were kept in check by natural factors such as rainfall
and hence by the availability of water. However, in recent times there has been
little or no effort to manage the grasslands to let them periodically rest and
recover. Owing to the lack of rotational grazing coupled with overstocking led
to decreasing productivity, erosion, a drying up of springs, wells and rivers,
and the growth of man-made deserts.
Overgrazing
produces unwanted secondary effect. For instance, it harms wildlife by
disrupting the natural equilibrium between native plants and wild herbivores
and compels shepherds to use trees for fuel. In Israel this poses a threat to
the remaining few hundred pistachio trees, which are estimated to be hundreds
of years old. Moreover, shepherds also kill scarce birds and animals for food.
It has been
increasingly felt that semiarid grazing lands are being destroyed at an
alarming rate. Nowadays the conversation of productive areas into deserts is
seen around the edges of the Sahara, the deserts of the Middle East Pakistan,
Mongolia Australia and Western North America.
More and more
data from investigations in Africa during the past few decades show that the
human and livestock misuse of semiarid grasslands has gradually led to a
complete loss of vegetation cover leaving the soil bare to wind and water
erosion and dust movement. Recent discoveries testify to the fact that large
amounts of airborne soil dust from the Sahara are transported long distances
into and over the Atlantic.
In India, in
recent times, desert like tracts have appeared because of human misuse of
vegetation and soil through overgrazing by cattle. Owing to the same fact,
large areas of African semi deserts and savannah that formerly seconded a
wealth of wildlife have turned sterile. Likewise, in many parts of east Africa,
West Africa and Madagascar, the area of deserts is spreading in previously
fertile countries at an alarming rate. As soon as overgrazing by cattle occur
or farmers practice unwise agricultural methods, vegetation and wildlife
rapidly disappear by erosion and give way to deserts.
Thinking of
the present state of the world’s grasslands and their functions with
ecosystems, it is imperative to comprehend the important role the grassland
vegetation plays in stabilizing the water cycle and preserving the soil. It is
also equally important to understand that grasslands cannot exist without
either of these renewable resources. Grasslands not only facilitate evaporation
but also keep the soil porous. Important salt nutrients both from the air and
the rains, essential for vegetal and animal life also flow to the soil and
subsoil water. If the grassland vegetation is destroyed, the fertile soil layer
disappears. When the vegetation dies, so do the animals. When a country grows
sterile, it is definite that the civilization existing there cannot survive