Meeting Abstract
Ol Pejeta Conservancy (OPC) in Kenya practices an integrated land management system where wildlife and cattle graze together. We hypothesize that abandoned ‘bomas’ (temporary enclosures that protect cattle from predators at night) enrich the area with accumulated dung, promoting growth of nutritious grass species that attract wildlife. Three abandoned boma and control sites were studied. Measurements included: biomass (pasture disc meter), grass species composition (pin drops), and dung identification and count to establish which animals use the sites. With the exception of the Eastern sector, which showed no difference, other sectors had 38-52% less biomass in abandoned bomas than controls, suggesting more grazing takes place in the boma sites. Also with the exception of the Eastern sector, the number of pin drop hits for ‘decreaser’ grass species (preferred by grazers due to high nutritional content) was 79-85% less in bomas than controls, indicating these species are being consumed preferentially. In contrast, the number of pin drop hits for ‘increaser II’ grass species (dominate overgrazed rangelands) was 60-64% higher in bomas than controls. Dung counts of wildlife were generally higher in bomas, with zebras being the exception. Our findings from the Northern and Southern sectors suggest that abandoned bomas attract wild ungulates due to a greater presence of nutritious grasses. The lack of differences in the Eastern sector may be because Eastern OPC is not currently used for ranching, so bomas there are much older than in other areas.
