Abstract
Despite the importance of local ecological knowledge of forage plants, there has been little discussion on how local agro-pastoralists perceive forage species diversity, abundance trends, habitat distributions and ecological drivers influencing changing abundance trends over time in rural West Africa’s savannas. In estimating, assessing and investigating the ecological variables, we performed elaborate ethnobotanical surveys in seven villages in northern Ghana and nine villages in southern-central Burkina Faso. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, bivariate correlation analysis and cognitive salience index calculations to disentangle the dynamics of local responses to ecological variables considered in this study. Our results revealed that agro-pastoralists exhibited extensive knowledge on forage species diversity, habitat types, abundance trends and ecological drivers. According to agro-pastoralists interviewed, about 82 percent of all forage species known to them were commonly available in local landscapes, while a majority of our interviewees indicated that available forage resources have shown a gradually increasing trend over the past few years. Rainfall variability, tree cutting and drought were the topmost perceived threats causing changes in the trends of forage species abundance. Given our findings, local perceptions of agro-pastoralists could have substantial practical implications in favor of forage-related biodiversity conservation and sustainable livestock production.
Highlights
A plethora of literature abounds with evidence that future projections and scenarios of global climatic conditions point to increasing incidences of unpredictable precipitation patterns, drought spells, overgrazing, severe mean annual temperature rises, intermittent floods and land degradation in global drylands[1,2,3,4], and such changes are unbeneficial[4]
These different forage species belong to various plant families such as Poaceae (37 forage species), Fabaceae (34) and Malvaceae (11), which were most dominant in the studied villages (Table 2)
Our findings showed that local agro-pastoralists regarded leaves of Afzelia africana and Pterocarpus erinaceus as very important forage sources for livestock feeding in both countries
Summary
A plethora of literature abounds with evidence that future projections and scenarios of global climatic conditions point to increasing incidences of unpredictable precipitation patterns, drought spells, overgrazing, severe mean annual temperature rises, intermittent floods and land degradation in global drylands[1,2,3,4], and such changes are unbeneficial[4]. Tropical West Africa, in particular, has been experiencing a significant increase in such challenging anthropogenic and natural incidences[5] and human population growth[6] This results in severe changes in the vegetation composition and species cover in West African savanna ecosystems[7]. While dryland rangelands do support approximately 50 percent of global livestock production[14], continued forage availability for livestock production is highly crucial since about 45 percent of rural households heavily rely upon sources of livestock-related income in typical West African settings[15]. As local knowledge tends to be unevenly distributed among local resource users and better understood in a particular context[23], we expect local agro-pastoralists’ perspectives on the above-referenced ecological variables to be different This ethnobotanical study is not intended to investigate causalities of such ecological variables with respect to plant citations provided by local agro-pastoralists in the research region.
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