Yves Vanderhaeghen interviews Dr Haemish Melvile, whose research suggests that animal carcasses can invigorate the environment
Sustainable land use
“We know that there is serious plastic pollution going on, but what we observed at Osun River was beyond expectation”. Dr Gideon Idowu
Reserve managers often agonise over whether a particular park has too many or too few elephants. Instead, they should look at whether natural ecosystems are functioning properly to support biodiversity.
Grassland restoration has often been trampled underfoot in the rush to score carbon credits by planting trees, and undermined by the assumption that degraded grasslands are easily fixed because they are thought of as relatively young habitats.
There is a worrying lack of consensus among different rangeland practitioners about what constitutes an optimally grazed system versus an overgrazed system.
Looked at one way it’s a game reserve. In another, it’s a vast cattle ranch. Or prime rangeland. Whichever way one looks at it, Shangani Holistic, in the Zimbabwe midlands, lives up to its name, fusing all the elements of its ecosystem so that each flourishes to the benefit of the others.
Says Clements, “A continuous decline in species along with a loss of habitat negatively affects the potential for biodiversity to sustain itself and human well-being. So the question is, how does Africa support socio-economic growth yet still conserve the natural resources on which it depends?”