Sustaining indigenous Maasai Alalili silvo-pastoral conservation systems for improved community livelihood and biodiversity conservation in East African rangelands

RESEARCH ARTICLE Sustaining indigenous Maasai Alalili silvo-pastoral conservation systems for improved community livelihood and biodiversity conservation in East African rangelands Elkana HezronID*, Issakwisa B. Ngondya, Linus K. Munishi Department of Sustainable Agriculture, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management, School of Life Sciences and Bioengineering, The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, Arusha, Tanzania * elkana.hezron@nm-aist.ac.tz Abstract Alalili system is one among the fewest remnant African indigenous and local knowledge sys- tems that is traditionally practiced by Maasai pastoral communities to conserve certain por- tions 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 endanger- ing 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 exist- ing occurrence and potential of Alalili systems as a pathway to improve resilience and sus- tain 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 sys- tems 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. There- fore, 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 pol- icy and practices. PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303649 May 16, 2024 1 / 24 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Hezron E, Ngondya IB, Munishi LK (2024) Sustaining indigenous Maasai Alalili silvo-pastoral conservation systems for improved community livelihood and biodiversity conservation in East African rangelands. PLoS ONE 19(5): e0303649. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303649 Editor: Luca Nelli, University of Glasgow College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences, UNITED KINGDOM

Received: October 24, 2023 Accepted: April 29, 2024 Published: May 16, 2024 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303649 Copyright: © 2024 Hezron et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.