Huge Herds Research Articles

State border fences as a threat to habitat connectivity

The conservation value of transboundary management of wildlife populations in Europe, that marked end of the 20<sup>th</sup> and the beginning of the 21<sup>th</sup> century, has come under huge pressure since 2015 especially in the South-eastern ­Europe due to border fences construction in response to large influxes of refugees/migrants. The primary aim of this study was to present data on the direct impacts of the long fence on wildlife (e.g. fence-related mortality) across the Hungary–Croatia border. We collected data on fence-related animal mortality along 136 km of the fence in the first 28 months after its construction. In total, 64 ungulates (38 red deer, 23 roe deer, and three wild boar) were found ­entangled in or deceased due to the razor wire fence. In addition, we present direct (photographic) evidence of newly recorded behaviour of red deer, as they gather in huge herds attempting to cross the border fence between Hungary and Croatia. Short term effect of the border fence is reflected in direct animal mortality, and as obstruction to the movement and behaviour of animals. In the case that current fences will remain or continue to expand along the northern boundary of South-eastern Europe, it is likely that fragmented wildlife populations in the region will suffer from negative effects of genetic subdivision such as loss of alleles and reduced heterozygosity that can cause important long-term damage to their vitality.

Fauna, Fire, and Farming: Landscape Formation over the Past 200 years in Pastoral East Pokot, Kenya

Fire was a key element of grass savanna formation all over eastern Africa. In the northern Baringo plains, Pokot pastoralists prospered in the nineteenth century, coexisting with huge herds of wildlife. During the twentieth century, the savanna ecosystem changed from a grass-dominated to bush-dominated as a result of growing numbers of livestock and people, which brought not only elephant hunts but also intensive grazing and changing fire regimes. Subsequently, herders diversified their livelihoods, and these land-use changes in the East Pokot highlands led to the spread of the endemic plant Dodonaea viscosa (Sapindaceae) beyond its original habitat. Ingolds’ concept of taskscape is applied here to illustrate a temporal, consecutive perspective of landscape transitions against the background of disappearing landscape agents (in this case large herbivores and fire).

Socio- Religious Dichotomy among the Gujjars of Himachal Pradesh

<p><em>The Gujjars are primarily a pastoral tribe. They possess huge herds of buffaloes and in search of better grazing grounds they are constantly on the move. In Himachal Pradesh Gujjars are bracketed as a Scheduled Tribe<strong>. </strong>As per the Census of 2011, 5.7% population of Himachal Pradesh falls in the category of Scheduled Tribe. Though Gujjars are scattered all over Himachal Pradesh, their major concentrations are in Bilaspur, Chamba, Kangra and Una districts. Presently, Gujjars in Himachal Pradesh are nomad, semi-nomad and settled. Gujjars of Chamba and Kangra lead nomadic life, in Una and Bilaspur regions they are permanent settlers. Nomad Gujjars are those who keep on wandering from one place to another in search of grazing facilities. Nomad Gujjars always roam and shuttle between the higher and the lower hills in search of grazing tracts. Nomad Gujjars are known as Heer Gujjars in Una and Bilaspur and in Chamba and Kangra they are recognized as Ban Gujjars. The semi nomad Gujjars, though have permanent places of stay, they leave that for short periods in winters when the year faced scarcity of grazing grounds and return back in summers; after spending the winter in the rich grazing tracts; to their permanent residence in summers. Gujjars of Kangra lead a semi-nomadic life. Lyall mentions these semi- nomadic Gujjars of Kangra as Sawana Gujjars, who followed fixed grazing route i.e. in spite of being constantly on the move they follow the fixed tract every year and used to stay in the same huts where they stayed last year.<a title="" href="file:///C:/Users/SPub/Desktop/IRA%20August%20Issue%202016/IRAJMSS/IRAJMSS8.docx#_ftn1">[1]</a> Presently also these Gujjars are known as Sawana Gujjars. Settled Gujjars are those Gujjars who did not move any in search of grazing facilities, instead possess their own lands and grazing tracts and lead a settled life. These Gujjars have their permanent houses. Gujjars in Una and Bilaspur lead a settled life. Melveill, the first settlement officer of Una, confirms their settlements in Una as early as 1860s.<a title="" href="file:///C:/Users/SPub/Desktop/IRA%20August%20Issue%202016/IRAJMSS/IRAJMSS8.docx#_ftn2">[2]</a> However, in spite of leading diverse lifestyles one common thing between these nomad and settled Gujjars is that they all keep huge herds of buffaloes. Nomad (Ban) and semi nomad (Sawana) Gujjars in Himachal Pradesh are all Muslim by religion while settled Gujjars are largely Hindu; though a few among them are Muslim. <strong></strong></em></p><div><br clear="all" /><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div><p><em><a title="" href="file:///C:/Users/SPub/Desktop/IRA%20August%20Issue%202016/IRAJMSS/IRAJMSS8.docx#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Lyall, J.B., Report of the Land Revenue Settlement of the Kangra District, Panjab, 1867-72, Lahore: Central Jail Press, 1874,</em></p><p><em> p. 55.</em></p><p><em> </em></p></div><div><p><em><a title="" href="file:///C:/Users/SPub/Desktop/IRA%20August%20Issue%202016/IRAJMSS/IRAJMSS8.docx#_ftnref2">[2]</a> Melveill, P.S., Report of the Revised Settlement of the Oonah, Hushiarpur, Gurshunkur and Hurriana Purganahs of the </em></p><p><em> Hushiarpur District, Lahor: Punjab Press, 1860, p. 4</em></p></div></div>

Traditional Home Cooking in the Craven Dales

Craven is a predominantly limestone region of the Pennines, extending eastwards from Cumbria to the watershed of the Aire Valley in North and West Yorkshire. From the eighteenth century its farmers concentrated on sheep and cattle, especially the grazing of huge herds of Scotch cattle on their way to the English autumn markets. At this time cereal crops went into a great decline, having to be brought in from elsewhere, while meat consumption virtually ceased for many families. As a result, the basic diet became largely dependent on oats in the form of crowdy, porridge, and varieties of oatcake, with locally produced butter and cheese. The farmers' diet was much more substantial, including home-killed beef, mutton, and pork products, along with purchased wheat flour. Local dishes also include pikelets, pasties, custards, curd tarts, pork pies, and ceremonial foods such as funeral cakes, for which traditional recipes are given.

Nuclear Weapons and the Escalation of Global Conflict since 1945

Atomic means national suicide. The ultimate delusion of atomic era is notion that national suicide is a feasible means of defense, and How apparently sensible and sane men could drift into such beliefs, journalist LF. Stone commented, will astound future historians, if there are any. As race to develop more destructive nuclear weapons with farther range escalated during 1950s, Stone warned: war clouds are gathering which could mean end of our species. The Russians and Americans resemble two huge herds moving toward possible conflict, too closely packed to struggle successfully against their fate. The helplessness of human kind is dominant feature of planetary landscape as crisis approaches.1Stone's comments effectively capture twisted logic of nuclear deterrence and crisis management during Cold War. The leaders of largest states consistently sought to avoid nuclear Armageddon by making prospect of a new world more horrific. By holding all of humankind hostage to possibility that full-scale conflict between strongest states would annihilate civilization, they hoped to insure restraint and compromise around sites of greatest danger - particularly Berlin, Taiwan Strait, Cuba, and Middle East. This was a strategic logic that encouraged all-ornothing thinking - stable preservation of geopolitical status quo or complete destruction in a fire of biblical proportions; an imperfect long peace or a radiated landscape where envy dead.2Despite its perversity, nuclear deterrence and crisis management worked during Cold War. On numerous occasions, American, Soviet, and later Chinese leaders stepped back from brink of conflict and sought compromise. They recognized that continued aggression against strong enemy interests would produce irreversible consequences. They recognized that victory in areas of most central Cold War disputes was not possible. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev captured chastening influence of nuclear threats most clearly he appealed to President John F. Kennedy to help untie knot of in aftermath ofthe Cuban missile crisis.3 [WJe are living at a time, Khrushchev wrote to Kennedy, when it is important to achieve progress together in international affairs. It is particularly important, I would say, that this be really tangible and actual progress creating a new situation - a situation of relaxation of tension, thus opening to us prospect of solution to other pressing problems and questions.4 The moment of greatest nuclear danger in Cold War inspired strongest push for settlement among leaders who controlled absolute weapon.5A Cold War settlement, however, never came to fruition. This was at least in part because of nuclear weapons. They encouraged avoidance of war, but they also encouraged continuation of conflict. McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy's special assistant for national security affairs, captured this paradox he explained that nuclear capabilities were the most potent status symbol since African colonies went out of fashion.6 Powerful states with global ambitions - particularly United States and Soviet Union - did not wish to use these weapons, but they manipulated their placement and posturing for purpose of displaying power. Nuclear warheads, missiles, and other delivery vehicles became currency for calculating strength, measure of a regime's ability to assure its own security, and security of its allies. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Warsaw Pact, two dominant post- 1945 alliances, centred their activities on deployment of nuclear forces. The use of these weapons for threats and signals of resolve, not actual war, was fundamental to Cold War diplomacy.A new international body of expert opinion coalesced around attempts to find most effective nuclear postures for national gain, without crossing threshold to Armageddon. …

Palaeobotany: Ice-age steppe vegetation in east Beringia.

Tiny plant fossils indicate how this frozen region once sustained huge herds of mammals. The landmass known as Beringia is an extensive region that existed during the Pleistocene epoch and included the land bridge between present-day Siberia and Alaska, now submerged beneath the Bering Strait. It must have been covered with vegetation even during the coldest part of the most recent ice age (some 24,000 years ago) because it supported large populations of woolly mammoth, horses, bison and other mammals during a time of extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation, although the nature of this vegetation has not been determined1,2,3. Here we report the discovery of macrofossils of prairie sage (Artemisia frigida), bunch-grasses and forbs that are representative of ice-age steppe vegetation associated with Pleistocene mammals in eastern Beringia. This vegetation was unlike that found in modern Arctic tundra, which can sustain relatively few mammals, but was instead a productive ecosystem of dry grassland that resembled extant subarctic steppe communities4,5.

Threats to the Serengeti Herds

The Serengeti National Park in Tanzania is famous for its huge herds of migrating wildebeest, zebras and other ungulates. But these herds spend much of the year in neighbouring reserves where their survival depends on preserving the right conditions. The authors made a study of two of these reserves with disturbing results. The Maswa Game Reserve they found was seriously threatened by invading (illegal) settlement with a fast-growing population cultivating land and felling trees; in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area they report that the Maasai have taken to poaching, both for subsistence meat and for trophies to sell – skins, ivory and rhino horn. In both places the guards are so poorly equipped they can do little to stop poaching.

Some Facets of Communal Hunting

In 1923, when comparing the Plains Indian bison corral with the reindeer pound of Lappland, Robert H. Lowie was struck by the detailed resemblances between these struc tures, which were pivotal in the quest for game in each area. Truly phenomenal numbers of bison formerly ranged the Plains. In 1793, Peter Fidler observed a herd near the Red Deer River in Alberta so large that no ground could be seen for them in that compleat semi-circle & extending at least 10 miles (MacGregor 1966: 82). Reindeer, or caribou, also tended to migrate in huge herds throughout the Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions of the world. But without effective methods

Trypanosome Diseases of Domestic Animals in Uganda: I. Trypanosoma Pecorum

As might be expected from the tropical nature of the country, Uganda suffers much from protozoal diseases, and as the wealth of the natives consists principally in cattle, goats, and sheep─the wealth of the natives consists principally in cattle, goats, and sheep─the King and chiefs having huge herds─there is much loss. To give an idea of the enormous mortality which must take place among the herds of cattle in Uganda, Sir Apolo Kagwa, K. C. M. G., the Prime Minister, may be quoted. He informed the Commission that during 1908 he had 1396 cows, which had 2021 calves, and of these calves 709 died─35 per cent. Further, of cows, bulls, and full-grown bullocks, there had died 351. This makes a total of 1060 deaths in one year. The number of the whole herd is not given, but may be put down at 4000. This means a yearly death-roll of about 25 per cent. During the same year the Government Transport Department in Entebbe lost 156 oxen between June and November.

Trypanosome diseases of domestic animals in Uganda. I. Trypanosoma pecorum

As might be expected from the tropical nature of the country, Uganda suffers much from protozoal diseases, and as the wealth of the natives consists principally in cattle, goats, and sheep─the wealth of the natives consists principally in cattle, goats, and sheep─the King and chiefs having huge herds─there is much loss. To give an idea of the enormous mortality which must take place among the herds of cattle in Uganda, Sir Apolo Kagwa, K. C. M. G., the Prime Minister, may be quoted. He informed the Commission that during 1908 he had 1396 cows, which had 2021 calves, and of these calves 709 died─35 per cent. Further, of cows, bulls, and full-grown bullocks, there had died 351. This makes a total of 1060 deaths in one year. The number of the whole herd is not given, but may be put down at 4000. This means a yearly death-roll of about 25 per cent. During the same year the Government Transport Department in Entebbe lost 156 oxen between June and November.