Ecoscience: Grazing Ecosystems?From Theory to Practice

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In Africa, however, the benefits of breaking with these traditions would be enormous. In the face of extremely rapid human population growth, African game animals are fast disappearing; even national parks are under intense pressure from expanding agriculture and poaching. And hunger is already widespread on the continent, which has been stricken by disastrous droughts and famines in the last few years. Food supplies per person in most African countries south of the Sahara desert declined by about 10% between 1970 and 1982, as population growth outstripped the gains in food production. As the current drought has deepened and spread, food production has plummeted by another 10%. A major contributing factor to this continent—wide tragedy has been desertification caused in significant part by overgrazing of semiarid lands by traditional domestic animals.

Clearly, game ranching could help preserve Africa's unique large animals and contribute substantially to its food supply—if it can become established before desertification is too far advanced even to support the game animals. We're happy to report that the Kenyan government is very interested in the Hopcrafts' project, and that more game ranches may be established in that nation and elsewhere in Africa in the near future. The Hopcrafts' ranch has been serving as a training ground for interested students taking degrees in wildlife management and animal husbandry. These students will eventually be able to apply what they've learned to new projects.

Indeed, the Hopcrafts are now looking to the establishment of a game ranch utilizing North American herbivores -deer, antelope, American bison-in New Mexico, where overgrazing of cattle has led to considerable desertification . In view of its potential for being an ecologically benign, sustainable, and productive system of food production in any climatic region, we hope that game ranching is an idea whose time has come.

People interested in the New Mexico game-ranching project can get information by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to US, Inc., 2957 Atkins Rd., Petosky, MI 49770 (616/347-1171).

The Ehrlichs' work is supported in part by a grant from the Koret Foundation of San Francisco.

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