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Active Project

Herding for Health

ClimateBiodiversity

The vast and highly biodiverse savannas, grasslands and shrublands of southern Africa support more than 50 million Indigenous and local pastoralists, offer habitats for iconic wildlife and store large quantities of planet-warming carbon.

But half of Africa’s native rangelands are degraded due to encroaching settlements, land tenure policies, climate change and overgrazing. As a result, land degradation and the loss of wildlife are on the rise.

The Herding for Health program — a partnership between Conservation International and the Peace Parks Foundation — is a community-driven livestock management model that supports the livelihoods of rural communities living in and around protected areas — while restoring rangelands and conserving biodiversity through herding, capacity building and collective governance.

7M

Hectares

The Herding for Health model has been successfully tested across all key rangeland ecosystems (semi-arid shrublands, mountain grasslands, and subtropical savannas) and is now being applied to restore and improve the management of 7 million hectares (17 million acres) of rangelands across seven countries in Africa, supported by US$ 150 million in site-based investments.

Voluntary stewardship

One of the key mechanisms in implementing Herding for Health is the voluntary stewardship agreements signed with communities that are custodians of the land. Pastoralist communities voluntarily commit to implementing planned grazing of their livestock to minimize overgrazing, remove invasive vegetation that hampers grass growth and water availability, and adopt wildlife-friendly practices, among other measures. In turn, they receive support to improve the quality of their livestock, reduce animal losses from wildlife predators and diseases, and access facilitated livestock markets, among other benefits.