nised area of a well is tantamount to
shaving off the hair of someone’s wife;
and to demolish or smash the watering
troughs is the equivalent of cutting off her
breasts. To remove the perimeter thorn
bush fence of a well is the same as strip-
ping naked in public the wife of its owner,
while burying a well is like burying her
alive. These and other rules and the cor-
responding punishments help the Gabbra
to manage their limited water resources,
to avoid the destruction so often visible
around “modern” water points and to pre-
serve biodiversity in a variety of special
microenvironments.
Problems and recommendations
Rangelands harbour a wealth of biodiver-
sity, which is economically and culturally
essential for the pastoral people. Over the
years, the culture of the Gabbra have
developed an elaborate system of land
use practices that helped to conserve the
unique flora in the rangeland and provided
for the livelihoods of pastoralist communi-
ties.^11 Currently, however, a number of
constraints and challenges are increasingly
apparent in opposition to the Gabbra con-
servation efforts:
Q the cultural practices, including taboos,
that helped to conserve biodiversity in
the past are being eroded by rapidly
changing social and
economic circum-
stances;
Q traditional natural
resources manage-
ment institutions are
weakening due to
conflicts between cus-
tomary organisations
and statutory laws;
Q people’s range and
capacity for mobility
are reduced due to
the government
efforts at sedentaris-
ing communities;
Q several “drought reserves” and dry sea-
son pastures reserves have been lost to
other land uses, including state protect-
ed areas;
Q the utilisation of range resources is
uneven, mostly due to lack of reliable
water sources;
Q people are perceived, and starting to
perceive themselves, as “poor” and, as
they are totally dependent on natural
resources, are attempting to get them-
selves out of “poverty” by taking up
inappropriate practices, such as agricul-
ture in marginal areas.
The hopes of reversing such a situation
are not high, but depend on a reversal of
perception and policy regard-
ing mobile pastoralism. Mobile
pastoralists need to be recog-
nised as key partners for bio-
diversity conservation in dry-
land ecosystems. Natural
resource managers and con-
servationists should value and
build upon the rich indigenous
knowledge of mobile indige-
nous communities such as the Gabbra and
support their livelihood system as the only
sustainable option in arid, non-equilibrium
History, cculture aand cconservation
Mobile ppastoral-
ists nneed tto bbe
recognised aas kkey
partners ffor bbio-
diversity cconser-
vation iin ddry-
land eecosystems.
Figure 7.The young Gabbra girls are largely tasked with the responsibil-
ity of herding goats and taking them to drinking points (Courtesy of
Chachu F. Ganya)
