Department of Sustainable Agriculture, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management, School of Life Sciences and Bioengineering, The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, Arusha, Tanzania.
PLoS One. 2024 May 16;19(5):e0303649. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0303649. eCollection 2024.
Alalili system is one among the fewest remnant African indigenous and local knowledge systems that is traditionally practiced by Maasai pastoral communities to conserve certain portions of rangeland resources such as pastures and water for subsequent grazing during dry seasons. Despite its existence, East African rangelands face diverse threats from tenure security, unsustainable practices, climate, and land-use change that are notably endangering the biodiversity, livelihoods, and ecosystems in the landscape. Like other indigenous conservation systems, the sustainability of Alalili systems is being threatened, as Maasai communities are in transition due to continuous socio-cultural transformations coupled with increased livestock and human populations. We aimed to capture and document the existing occurrence and potential of Alalili systems as a pathway to improve resilience and sustain both biodiversity conservation and community livelihoods in rangeland areas of northern Tanzania. A cross-sectional research design was applied with the adoption of both purposive and stratified random sampling techniques to distinctively characterize the Alalili systems by land use and tenure types. Our results identified the existence of both communal and private Alalili systems. Their sizes varied significantly across types (t = 4.4646, p < 0.001) and land uses (F = 3.806, df = 3, p = 0.0123). While many (82%) of these Alalili systems are found in the communal land, our observations show a re-practice of Alalili systems in the private land is considered largely a re-emerging strategy for securing pastures in the face of local and global change. More than half (73%) of Alalili systems were found within game-controlled areas with little representation (about 8%) in non-protected land. Therefore, their sustainability is threatened by anthropogenic and climatic pressures, making their persistence more vulnerable to extinction. We recommend mainstreaming these practices into core pasture production and management areas, facilitating their reinforcement into policy and practices.
阿拉拉利系统是非洲本土和当地知识体系中极少数仍然存在的系统之一，传统上由马赛游牧社区使用，以保护牧场资源和水源等某些部分，以便在旱季后续放牧。尽管它的存在，东非的牧场仍然面临着多种威胁，包括土地保有权的不安全、不可持续的做法、气候和土地利用变化，这些都对生物多样性、生计和景观中的生态系统构成了严重威胁。与其他本土保护系统一样，阿拉拉利系统的可持续性也受到威胁，因为马赛社区正在经历社会文化转型，加上牲畜和人口的增加，社区正在发生变化。我们的目的是捕捉和记录阿拉拉利系统的现有存在和潜力，作为改善北部坦桑尼亚牧场地区的弹性和维持生物多样性保护和社区生计的途径。我们采用了横断面研究设计，并采用了有针对性和分层随机抽样技术，以独特的方式根据土地利用和土地保有权类型来描述阿拉拉利系统。我们的研究结果表明，存在公共和私人的阿拉拉利系统。它们的大小在不同类型（t = 4.4646，p < 0.001）和土地利用类型（F = 3.806，df = 3，p = 0.0123）之间存在显著差异。尽管这些阿拉拉利系统中的许多（82%）都存在于公共土地上，但我们的观察表明，在私人土地上重新实践阿拉拉利系统是一种在面对当地和全球变化时确保牧场的新兴策略。在受控制的游戏区内发现了超过一半（73%）的阿拉拉利系统，而在非保护区内，它们的代表性很少（约 8%）。因此，它们的可持续性受到人为和气候压力的威胁，使得它们的生存更易灭绝。我们建议将这些实践纳入核心牧场生产和管理领域，促进将其纳入政策和实践。
