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

overall abundance of 20% Alalili systems, open areas had 16% of Alalili systems, and WMA had 14% of Alalili systems. For each land use category, Alalili distribution varied with regard to class sizes whereby GCA had 51%, 37%, and 12% of small, large, and medium-sized Alalili systems respectively. NCA had 83.3%, 8.3%, and 8.3% of small, large, and medium-sized Alalili systems respectively while open areas had 74%, 16%, and 10% of small, medium, and large- sized Alalili systems respectively. WMA on the other hand had 76.5% and 23.5% of small and large-sized Alalili systems respectively and none medium-sized Alalili systems (Fig 7). 3.3.3 Abundance and distribution of communal Alalili systems across land use and size categories. The highest abundance of communal Alalili systems was recorded in the GCA with a total proportion of 48% Alalili followed by NCA with an abundance proportion of 25% communal Alalili systems. The open areas comprised of 17% communal Alalili while WMA had the least abundance of 10% communal Alalili systems. An abundance within each land use depicted different distribution patterns of communal Alalili systems. GCA had 53.2%, 34.0%, and 12.8% of small, large, and medium-sized Alalili systems respectively. NCA had 83.3%, 8.3%, and 8.3% of small, large, and medium-sized Alalili respectively. Open areas were fea- tured by 81.3%, 12.5%, and 6.2% of small, medium, and large-sized Alalili systems respectively. WMA on the other hand comprised 70% and 30% of small and large Alalili systems respec- tively and none of them was medium sized (Table 2).

Based on size categories, small size recorded the highest abundance of communal Alalili which was 67% followed by large size which comprised 23% of Alalili systems. Medium size recorded the least abundance of communal Alalili encompassing 10% of Alalili systems (Table 2). Further distribution analysis within each size category depicted that 38.5%, 30.8%, 20%, and 10.7% of small-sized Alalili systems are found in GCA, NCA, open areas, and WMA respectively. 72.7%, 13.6%, 9.1%, and 4.6% of large-sized Alalili systems are located in the GCA, WMA, NCA, and in open areas respectively. There were 60%, 20%, and 20% of medium-sized Alalili systems in GCA, NCA, and in the open areas respectively, and none in WMA (Fig 8A). 3.3.4 Abundance and distribution of private Alalili systems across land use and size cat- egories. GCA recorded the highest abundance of private Alalili systems which was 54% Fig 7. Generalized distribution of the surveyed Alalili systems by size across land use categories. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303649.g007 PLOS ONE Sustaining Alalili systems in rangelands of East Africa PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303649 May 16, 2024 13 / 24