Kenya Forestry Research Institute, Kenya

This study focused on nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralists whose resources of concern are water, dry season fodder and pastures. This study envisages that the success of the traditional pastoral resource utilization system depends upon risk spreading and highly flexible mechanisms such as human and livestock mobility, communal land ownership, herd diversity and herd separation or splitting. The current livestock production system was unsustainable thus the basis for this study, which seeks to assess the community’s socio-economic characteristics; document the trends in the livestock population; and assess the level of forest use in livestock production by the forest adjacent local community. Seventy-nine respondents (30%) were studied using a structure questionnaire and data analyzed using Excel (MS office) and Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS). Trade in livestock, livestock products and livestock inputs provide employment and income opportunities for the local communities. The majority of the local people derive 78% of their total income from livestock sales. The sustainable forest based livestock production system depends upon adoption of controlled grazing practices where incentives, taxation methods, environmental education and awareness programs, appropriate resettlement of forest dwellers and promotion of alternative sources of income such as agri-pastoral business development.

Keywords: Forest; Grazing; Livestock; Pasture; Community; Water.