Browsing by Author "Hezron, Elkana"

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Harnessing traditional principles and guidelines for utilization compliance and sustainability of Maasai Alalili systems in northern Tanzania
(Taylor & Francis, 2025-05) Hezron, Elkana; Ngondya, Issakwisa; Munishi, Linus
Resilience in Indigenous communities and their lands faces challenges from multiple fronts, including climate change, biodiversity loss, altered biogeochemical flows, and socio-cultural transitions. Innovative solutions like Indigenous local knowledge featuring the community repositories that could enable policy practice are needed to explore, shift, and articulate such trajectories towards sustainable and desired futures. The study used a mixed-method approach to gather information on the extent to which Maasai communities practice traditional principles and guidelines for sustainable management of the Alalili systems. Purposive and stratified random sampling techniques facilitated data collection from literature review, direct field observation, key informant interviews, focused group discussions, and household surveys, which were analyzed using Chi-square and t-tests, narrative, and descriptive techniques. The findings indicate a variation between the traditional principles and guidelines reported from the surveyed literature and those recorded from the field survey. We found that the literature sparingly reported six aspects of the traditional principles and guidelines, whereas the field survey from the community comprehensively reported four harmonized aspects. More than 50% of the surveyed Alalili systems are currently not complying with documented management principles and guidelines from the literature and community traditions, thus increasing their proximity to the effects of degradation. We reveal that the probability of compliance is higher in the private Alalili category. We recommend their official recognition by policymakers and putting them into practice as a conservation initiative for supporting future rangeland sustainability and the pastoral communities’ livelihood development.
Quantification of deadwood littered by Acacia spp. in semi-arid ecosystems of central Tanzania: The role of deadwood in biodiversity conservation
(Journal of Biodiversity and Environmental Sciences, 2021-06-30) Hezron, Elkana; Nyahongo, Julius
Deadwood (DW) is an important carbon component for conservation and management of biodiversity resources. They are ubiquitous in many semi-arid ecosystems although its estimation is still posing lots of challenges. At Chimwaga woodland in Dodoma Region of Central Tanzania, seasonal quantification of DW produced by two Acacia spp. was done to evaluate the influence of each tree species, Dbh and canopy area on DW biomass and to determine their ecological role in conservation of semi-arid ecosystem. Both purposive and random sampling techniques were used in the course of a completely randomized design (CRD). Thirty trees from each species of Acacia tortilis and Acacia nilotica were studied. Results portray that DW biomass was significantly higher (P < 0.05) in the dry season than in the rain season whereby A. tortilis produced 669.0 ± 135.90kg DM/ha (dry season) and only 74.3 ± 135.90kg DM/ha (rain season) while A. nilotica produced 426.1 ± 135.90kg DM/ha (dry season) and 36.5 ± 135.90kg DM/ha (rain season). DW biomass did not correlate significantly (P > 0.05) with Dbh and canopy area. Inter-specific interactions were encountered from experimental areas where DW was littered that facilitated ecosystem balance in semi-arid areas. This information is important for estimating amount of dead wood biomass required to be retained in the forest provided that, at the expense of ecology, they are refuge for arthropods, fungi, bryophytes and other important soil microbes representing primary components of Biodiversity in semi-arid ecosystems.
Roles of Maasai Alalili Systems in Sustainable Conservation of Fodder Species of East African Rangelands
(Elsevier, 2025-01-01) Hezron, Elkana; Ngondya, Issakwisa; Munishi, Linus
Alalili systems are among the indigenous rangeland management strategies that face pressures from unsustainable land use practices and impacts of climate change. We aimed to establish the vascular fodder plants' composition and abundance, compared with historical vegetation data to understand their evolution and trends to inform sustainable management of rangelands in northern Tanzania. The vegetation composition of the northern Tanzania rangelands surveyed before the 1980s was compared to empirical data from a vegetation survey of Alalili in 2022. A cross-sectional design using purposive and stratified random sampling techniques was applied during the field survey. The quadrat count method was used to estimate the composition and diversity of fodder taxa in Alalili systems. Secondary data from the northern Tanzania rangelands before the 1980s were collected through a systematic literature review. Key informant interviews, focused group discussions, and household surveys were used to gather information about the community's knowledge of historical quality changes in the rangelands. Our results indicate that, before the 1980s, the rangelands of northern Tanzania had relatively higher fodder species composition (127 woody and 119 herbaceous species) than the Alalili systems in 2022 (119 woody and 82 herbaceous species). Fodder species composition and diversity were relatively higher in communal than in private Alalili (t = 4.18, P < 0.001). At the same time, the species density was lower in communal than in private Alalili (t = -2.7272, P = 0.008). This work suggests that Alalili systems still hold substantial diverse fodder plants that most northern Tanzanian rangelands used to harbor before the 1980s. Therefore, they can be considered reservoirs of vital fodder species that can be used to restore degraded rangeland areas in northern Tanzania and elsewhere.
Sustaining indigenous Maasai Alalili silvo-pastoral conservation systems for improved community livelihood and biodiversity conservation in East African rangelands Elkana HezronID*, Issakwisa B. N
(PLOS ONE, 2024-04-29) Hezron, Elkana; Ngondya, Issakwisa; Munishi, Linus
Alalili system is one among the fewest remnant African indigenous and local knowledge systems that is traditionally practiced by Maasai pastoral communities to conserve certain portions of rangeland resources such as pastures and water for subsequent grazing during dry seasons. Despite its existence, East African rangelands face diverse threats from tenure security, unsustainable practices, climate, and land-use change that are notably endangering the biodiversity, livelihoods, and ecosystems in the landscape. Like other indigenous conservation systems, the sustainability of Alalili systems is being threatened, as Maasai communities are in transition due to continuous socio-cultural transformations coupled with increased livestock and human populations. We aimed to capture and document the existing occurrence and potential of Alalili systems as a pathway to improve resilience and sustain both biodiversity conservation and community livelihoods in rangeland areas of northern Tanzania. A cross-sectional research design was applied with the adoption of both purposive and stratified random sampling techniques to distinctively characterize the Alalili systems by land use and tenure types. Our results identified the existence of both communal and private Alalili systems. Their sizes varied significantly across types (t = 4.4646, p < 0.001) and land uses (F = 3.806, df = 3, p = 0.0123). While many (82%) of these Alalili systems are found in the communal land, our observations show a re-practice of Alalili systems in the private land is considered largely a re-emerging strategy for securing pastures in the face of local and global change. More than half (73%) of Alalili systems were found within game-controlled areas with little representation (about 8%) in non-protected land. Therefore, their sustainability is threatened by anthropogenic and climatic pressures, making their persistence more vulnerable to extinction. We recommend mainstreaming these practices into core pasture production and management areas, facilitating their reinforcement into policy and practices.