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Despite making up more than half the world’s land surface, rangelands rarely get the global attention they deserve.
When an ancient forest is razed, it provokes outrage – and rightly so. But when a meadow disappears, it often vanishes silently.
Rangelands have long been dismissed as ‘wastelands’ – left to sit unused until they can be turned into ‘useful’ cities and croplands. But, as it turns out, rangelands feed billions of people, protect us against the climate crisis and host a remarkable diversity of wildlife.
Read on to learn about these vast landscapes and why they’re much more important than you might think.
Rangelands are ecosystems where livestock or wildlife graze. They’re usually dominated by grasses, bushes or shrubs.
Many rangelands are unsuitable for agriculture. Yet communities still live and thrive in these habitats as pastoralists, hunter-gathers or ranchers.
The majority of rangelands are located in drylands, but many can also be found in grasslands, mountains and tundra.
Other biomes that fall under the umbrella of rangelands include desert shrublands, savannas, steppes, prairies and shrubby woodlands.
They exist in some of the world’s most extreme locations, from the freezing temperatures of the Tibetan Plateau to the arid Sahel.
A map of the world’s rangelands. Data: https://ecoregions.appspot.com, licensed under CC-BY 4.0.
According to the Rangelands Atlas, a 2021 map compiled by major international organizations like the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the UN Environment Programme, rangelands cover over 50 percent of the Earth’s land surface. They appear on every continent except Antarctica.
Rangelands cover much of Africa, most of the Middle East and the Mediterranean, Australia, large stretches of Central Asia including Mongolia and western China, the Arctic region, western North America and much of southern South America.
Mountain pastures in the Italian Alps, the ‘upside-down forest’ of the Brazilian Cerrado and Zambia’s Silowana Complex are just a few far-flung examples of the world’s diverse rangelands.
Rangelands are crucial for sequestering carbon in the soil that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere as climate-warming carbon dioxide. In fact, they store up to 30 percent of terrestrial carbon, according to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
When plants are grazed upon, part of their roots dies off, which returns carbon to the soil. If enough time is left until the next graze, the plant and its roots regrow and begin the cycle again.
If rangelands are properly managed, this cycle can carbon to the soil, while livestock contribute by pooping – thus returning even more carbon to the earth.
In grasslands, plants grow deep roots to reach for water and nutrients, which in turn holds down the soil while aerating it and spurs plant growth on the surface.
This vegetation also supports wildlife: in fact, more than 1.3 million square kilometers of rangelands worldwide are recognized as key biodiversity areas.
Despite their potentially harsh conditions, rangelands support the livelihoods of roughly 2 billion people. Many traditional communities steward their local landscapes, managing roughly 1 billion animals worldwide, and around 10 percent of the world’s meat comes from livestock reared on rangelands.
These livestock can be a crucial part of landscape management, too. For example, regular grazing can limit the growth of flammable (and invasive) vegetation in arid landscapes, which can reduce the risk of devastating wildfires.
Pastoralism is a food and fiber production system where livestock are extensively herded across the landscape, providing communities with meat, milk, wool and other materials. Animals are used to turn inedible grasses into goods for people to use and consume.
There are up to 500 million pastoralists worldwide, according to the UNCCD. Herders and ranchers may graze their animals within certain enclosed spots locally, move their animals across different seasonal pastures or even travel long distances with their animals in search of suitable grazing land.
The animals raised vary widely depending on the climate. For example, sheep and goats are popular livestock in the Middle East, while Andean pastoralists might instead herd alpacas and llamas. Cattle, sheep, horses, reindeer, yak and donkeys are also herded across the world.
Traditional pastoralist practices are often a much more sustainable way to produce meat than intensive farming as they work within the limits of the landscape rather than pushing against it.
Not only do pastoralists produce food on land unsuited to agriculture, but they also steward their landscapes through sustainable herding techniques.
Around half of the world’s rangelands are degraded – and despite their importance, their demise is receiving far less attention than those of other landscapes, such as forests.
The greatest threat facing rangelands is conversion into croplands or other land uses, such as tree plantations or renewable energy projects. This is driven by rising demand for food and resources, as well as urbanization.
It’s also fueled by the longstanding misconception that rangelands are unproductive wastelands. Many governments across the Global South have continued colonial-era policies of favoring settled agriculture or livestock rearing, pushing pastoralists to the margins.
When rangelands are taken over for other land uses, their soils often suffer and become depleted of nutrients. This leads to erosion, salinization and soil compaction, which in turn inhibits plant growth, fuels drought and harms biodiversity.
Meanwhile, many pastoralist communities are being blocked from the land they need to maintain their herds. Some of the obstacles they face include land enclosure, the fortification of national borders and conflicts over grazing lands.
Then there’s the added burden of the climate crisis, which is destabilizing rangelands by causing droughts in some areas and flooding in others.
Globalization has also contributed to the rapid spread of diseases like peste des petits ruminants (PPR), a highly deadly disease that threatens 80 percent of the world’s goats and sheep.
While the problems facing the world’s rangelands can sound daunting, we can still make an impact – even on an individual level.
The first thing you can do is to find your nearest rangeland and learn more about it. What species call it home, and how are they faring? How healthy is the local ecosystem? How has this land been traditionally managed?
You can then find local organizations working to protect those rangelands and consider donating or volunteering for them. Or, if one doesn’t exist, why not start one yourself?
Another way to protect rangelands is to support sustainable pastoralism. This also helps protect wildlife as herd animals have become a crucial part of many landscapes, and their disappearance could unbalance local ecosystems.
Consider buying products sourced from local pastoralists who use sustainable grazing techniques. For their part, ranchers and herders can ensure that these landscapes are not overgrazed and take other actions to be good environmental stewards, such as by restoring riparian buffer zones.
Local and national governments have a major role to play in creating policies that incentivize good rangeland management. For example, they can integrate rangelands into sustainable management plans aimed at boosting carbon sequestration, or create measures to protect the land tenure rights of pastoralist communities.
Communities can facilitate the unique needs of pastoralists, such as allowing herds to pass through lands to reach grazing grounds.
No matter if you’re a pastoralist, policymaker or concerned individual, you have a role to play in helping protect these vast landscapes that cover half the planet – and keeping the climate crisis at bay in the process.
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