Range Management: Optimizing Forage Production and Qualityy

Range management involves optimising forage production and quality, both in the short term and in the long term. In the short term, temporal climatic variability, stocking rate, grazing system, fire, animal type. and spatial variability, inter alia, strongly, influence forage production and quality. On the other hand, long-term optimisation requires prevention of range deterioration. The nature of this process seems to be profoundly different between humid and arid rangelands, at least in tropical and subtropical zones. In the former, changes are relatively predictable, overgrazing resulting in gradual deterioration. In the latter, change is event driven, providing the grazier with long periods of system inertia interspersed randomly by risks and opportunities to cause or prevent community change from one state to another. Management for long-term sustainability often requires sacrifice of short-term welfare. The benefits of such management may even be beyond the planning horizon of the grazier. Implementing conservation thus requires altruism on the part of the grazier - an unlikely option. If society requires such conservation, it may need to ainend its values, and either provide the grazier with an incentive, or outlaw overgrazing.