Rangelands comprise between 40 and 50 percent of all U.S. land and serve the nation both as productive areas for wildlife, recreational use, and livestock grazing and as watersheds. The health and management of rangelands have been matters for scientific inquiry and public debate since the 1880s, when reports of widespread range degradation and livestock losses led to the first attempts to inventory and classify rangelands. Scientists are now questioning the utility of current methods of rangeland classification and inventory, as well as the data available to determine whether rangelands are being degraded. These experts, who are using the same methods and data, have come to different conclusions. This book examines the scientific basis of methods used by federal agencies to inventory, classify, and monitor rangelands; it assesses the success of these methods; and it recommends improvements. The book's findings and recommendations are of interest to the public; scientists; ranchers; and local, state, and federal policymakers.

The grazing of animals on common land and associated property rights were the original basis of the concept of "the tragedy of the commons". Drawing on the classic work of Elinor Ostrom and the readings of political ecology, this book questions the application of exclusive property rights to mobile pastoralism and rangeland resource governance. It argues that this approach inadequately represents property relations in the context of Mongolian pastoralism. The author presents an in-depth exploration and analysis of mobile pastoral production and resource management in Mongolia. The country is widely considered to be a prime example of successful and resilient common pool resource management, but now faces a dilemma as policy advocates attempt to adjust historical pastoralism to a modern property regime framework. The book strengthens understanding of the complex and multilateral considerations involved in natural resource governance and management in a mobile pastoralist context. It considers the implications for common pool resource management and pastoral societies in Africa, Russia and China and includes recommendations for formulating national policy.

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book provides an unprecedented synthesis of the current status of scientific and management knowledge regarding global rangelands and the major challenges that confront them. It has been organized around three major themes. The first summarizes the conceptual advances that have occurred in the rangeland profession. The second addresses the implications of these conceptual advances to management and policy. The third assesses several major challenges confronting global rangelands in the 21st century. This book will compliment applied range management textbooks by describing the conceptual foundation on which the rangeland profession is based. It has been written to be accessible to a broad audience, including ecosystem managers, educators, students and policy makers. The content is founded on the collective experience, knowledge and commitment of 80 authors who have worked in rangelands throughout the world. Their collective contributions indicate that a more comprehensive framework is necessary to address the complex challenges confronting global rangelands. Rangelands represent adaptive social-ecological systems, in which societal values, organizations and capacities are of equal importance to, and interact with, those of ecological processes. A more comprehensive framework for rangeland systems may enable management agencies, and educational, research and policy making organizations to more effectively assess complex problems and develop appropriate solutions.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) developed these guidelines with the overall objective to protect and improve the productivity of the ruminant livestock species of South Sudan. Focussing on the best use of local feed resources, the guidelines mainly target livestock extension workers promoting livestock feed development good practices to pastoral and agropastoral communities as well as the emerging market-oriented smallholder livestock producers. This document also serves as an important tool for advancing the policy and strategic priority actions of the East Africa Animal Feed Action Plan (FAO and IGAD, 2019) and the draft National Livestock Development Policy of South Sudan.