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Grasslands

Grasslands cover over 40% of the Earth’s surface and are found in every region of the world. They are characterised by herbaceous vegetation and shrub land and include the African savannah, Afromontane grassland, Central Asian steppe, Artic tundra, the Cerrado in Brazil and the Pantanal in Paraguay.

Grasslands can be natural ecosystems, maintained by grazing ungulates such as wildebeest, zebra and saiga. Semi-natural grasslands are created and maintained by humans, through livestock rearing and hay making practices. When semi-natural grasslands are managed using traditional farming methods they support an extremely high number of plants and animals. Grasslands are maintained, naturally or through human activity, by fire, grazing, drought, frost and poor soils. These factors and disturbances prevent the establishment of forest.

Grassland habitats support a wide diversity of species, from one of the rarest antelopes on Earth, the saiga, to wetland birds and chirruping crickets. Some of the world’s most threatened predators; cheetah, African wild dog, African lion and snow leopard depend on large grazing ungulates for their survival. Grasslands are also essential to the livelihoods of millions of people and provide forage for domestic livestock and an indirect source of revenue from tourism such as large game safaris. The greatest threats to grasslands are conversion to agricultural land, over-grazing, human settlement, urbanisation, land abandonment and desertification.

Fauna & Flora International is conserving and protecting biodiversity rich grasslands and the species and human livelihoods they support. In Croatia we’re developing a model for the conservation of the country’s amazing grassland biodiversity; in China we’re working with Tibetan nomads to prevent desertification and grassland degradation. Elsewhere we’re working within grassland ecosystems to conserve endangered wildlife such as snow leopards, lion and black rhino.