Feasibility of transfering the management of range lands and transhoumance to nomads (Case study: Summer rangelands of Hadavand tribe)

Considering the extent of rangeland areas as well as the limited capabilities of the government in managing these areas, the issue of using potentials outside of the government management system to protect national areas has been raised by some experts. One of these abilities is the presence of people who are continuously present in the rangelands. The key question is this, whether rangeland utilizers optimally managed these fields as in the past? The answer to the question required an investigation of the phenomenon under the prevailing conditions. For this purpose, the issue of the "feasibility of reassigning range management to nomads and investigating its effects" in the pilot areas was recognized as reasonable. 

After holding several meetings, the summer rangelands of Dasht Lar, Tehran's Hadavand tribe were chosen as a pilot, and a memorandum of understanding was concluded between the representatives of the nomads and some related government bodies regarding the transfer of the management of the selected rangelands to the representatives of the nomads and the government's support for them. The implementation of the 4-year project started in 2014 with "action research" studies. Evaluations were done using two standard research methods, quantitative and qualitative. Qualitative evaluation of the performance of nomadic representatives in the management of nomads and rangelands. This evaluation quantitatively also included the impact of this management method on vegetation cover indicators. To carry out the last phase after rangeland typing, considering the rangeland area, vegetation changes, accuracy, and study time, 20 plots of 1 square meter were established along two transects of 500 meters. By the random-systematic sampling method, rangeland capacity indicators were calculated by cutting and weighing method, condition trend with trend scale, and exploitation percentage using production difference before the nomads entered and after they left the rangeland. 

The qualitative part of the study revealed that this management method had an average success rate of 40% in the region. The lack of serious volition of the custodian organization in transferring management to the nomads, the lack of allocation of government funds for the implementation of the programs and projects predicted by the nomad representatives, and the protection of the region were analyzed as influential reasons for the complete failure of the management decisions of the nomad representatives. The results of quantitative evaluations also showed that the status of the systems during the research period, the average, and the trend of the situation remained the same. Except for the customary central Kammerdasht (which was negative), all other systems were positive. In each year, the exploitation percentage was higher than the allowed limit (50%), ranging from 0.72 to 1.26. The variance analysis also demonstrated the effect of year on most of the investigated indicators at two levels of 5% and 1% significance. Comparing the averages also showed that, except for utilization percentage, other indicators had an increasing trend. 

In general, the management of nomadic representatives was evaluated as successful in improving the conditions of summer rangelands in the Ghoshkhaneh basin of the Lar Plain, so it seems that establishing the official presence of natural and legal representatives of nomads in the management of rangelands can be effective in improving the coverage of the area.