Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2009
Giraffes eat gall-bearing acacias which domestic animals never do; elephants will eat some shrubs which, in the same conditions, even goats will not touch. In Africa wildlife is an efficient user of the poorer land, whereas nearly all grazing land is badly managed by man. It does not benefit man to destroy the wildlife in order to spread his inefficient methods over yet more land. The author–agriculturist and well-known naturalist and conservationist–pleads for sound land management based upon research which would allow a place for the wildlife as an efficient user of certain land and a valuable resource.
* Grazing areas are defined in this paper as those parts of Africa where grass is a dominant or co-dominant form of vegetation, eaten by a population of wild or domestic animals, or both. Such areas can include both inhabited and uninhabited regions, and also woodland communities where grass forms a major portion of the ground vegetation. Forest and bare desert are excluded, though even very severe desert environments will support grazing animals as long as there is some grass.
This paper was presented at the ITC (International Institute for Aerial Survey and Earth Sciences)-Unesco Seminar on Integrated Surveys of Natural Grazing Areas, Delft, 1967.