Sheep rearing as a strategy of environmental protection and sustainable development

Recent years have seen a number of changes in the management of forests. There is a major shift towards a more decentralized and people oriented forestry. Responding to scarcities, villagers have started organizing themselves to reverse degradation and restore productivity. The result has been a renewal of degraded ecosystems. The destruction of natural forests for timber, cropland, fuel wood, pasture, urbanization have had an impact on many poor rural families who are dependent on forest resources for fuel, fodder, food, medicine, housing etc. The deterioration of forests has accelerated soil erosion, sedimentation of rivers, increased flooding, and overtaxed the land's capacity to regenerate and sustain. It is now being recognised that local communities need to be involved in establishing sustainable forest management systems. Governments are opening a number of opportunities for sustainable forest management and biodiversity conservation by decentralizing authority and responsibility for resource management in different parts of the world. The various initiatives have led to greater access and control of forest resources by local people, in turn resulting in improvement in forest protection and management and reducing pressure on resources. Substantial areas of degraded forests have been rehabilitated and new forests planted. Local people have started supporting forest conservation where they have been able to reap financial returns from benefit-sharing schemes.

The Present paper is based on Socio Economic Study of shepherd in Mahaboobnagar of Andhra Pradesh. Most of these are shepherd groups depend on sheep rearing in tradition inherent over years. Most of these villagers are poor and depend heavily on sheep rearing actives. These social groups are with land and without land, with sheep and without sheep. The shepherds in most of these areas are undertaking sheep rearing as a very important survival and income generating activity. However they earn lesser and lesser incomes as the size of their sheep starts diminishing return to scale.