Portraits Of Pastoralism
Pastoralists are people who live with livestock, while the seasonal movement of livestock with their human tenders is called transhumance, and is practiced by an estimated global population of 50 million shepherds and drovers. Some herd sheep or goats, others herd cattle or yaks, and still others tend to water buffalo or camels. Many, including this goat herder in Turkey, have dogs for livestock guardian duties, as well as companionship, hunting, and herding.
Angel is a pastoralist in the mountains of Bulgaria. He carved the head of his shepherd’s crook with a symbolic representation of his beliefs. The serpent denotes that all good comes from the earth, while the wolf and the ram represent the interconnectedness of nature (predator and prey). Europe has experienced an overall agricultural decline in recent decades — a trend it is now working to reverse in order to promote self-sufficiency and use of local resources.
Although there are small towns and ranches found throughout the rural areas of the America West, wildlife and livestock vastly outnumber people. This region is called the Empty Interior because its arid and semi-arid landscapes were never fully settled for permanent residency, but are traditionally used by drovers for seasonal livestock grazing on areas declared public lands. Private lands are primarily ribbons along waterways where native grass hay can be raised and harvested, as Lennie is doing here.
There are more than 200 million nomadic people in the world, with movements determined primarily by the needs of their livestock herds. The herds are able to make use of economically marginal lands outside settled areas, converting natural forage into human food, without the need for anything other than that provided by the landscape. Nomads may sell or trade animals, eat their meat and drink their milk, weave clothing from their fiber, and produce needed items from their hides. Nomadism is a survival strategy, and nomads successfully manage their rangelands with a high degree of natural diversity.
Many of today’s sheep producers in the American West are descendants of immigrants from the Basque country of France and Spain who immigrated as sheep herders, taking their wages in the form of sheep. They were able to build their own herds, and purchase private land to create their own ranches. Bands of domestic sheep walk the same trails that were blazed more than a century ago, migrating in seasonal movements from desert to mountains for summer grazing, and returning to lower elevations with snowfall — some trail more than 150 miles a season.
A village woman sends her cattle to graze the highlands of eastern Turkey. Turkey ranks in the top six countries with the highest number of internally displaced persons in the world. The Kurds, a culture of livestock-herding nomads are the world’s largest ethnic group without a country of their own. Most Kurdish flocks consist of about 450 animals, two herders, and their livestock guardian dogs. Loyalty to Turkish nationalism has resulted in policies of involuntary assimilation of other cultures, including forced evacuation and village destruction in the government’s attempt to de-populate the countryside.
Juan Carlos is a range sheep producer in Spain. There is a pack of seven wolves that live on his ranch, and he rarely has losses to the wolves because he uses 11 Spanish Mastiff dogs with his 1,000 head of sheep. In Spain, herders are not allowed to have guns, and wolf biologists are in charge of distributing Spanish Mastiff pups to livestock producers in areas where the wolf population is expanding. Livestock protection dogs have been bred for thousands of years to protect their herds, and many livestock producers continue to practice this ancient tradition.
Camels have sustained nomad pastoralists for eons, from the deserts of Africa and the Middle East, to the colder climates of Central Asia. These Mongolian herders ride Bactrian (two-humped) camels that are used for milk, food, clothing, saddle-leather, and transportation.
In India, Hindu pastoralists also raise water buffalo. They feel a deep connection to their livestock because of religious beliefs, and because of a dharma (an inherited duty) to tend to animals.
Sat is a herder from a small village in Nepal who came to America on a work visa to herd sheep on western rangelands. Even the relatively low wages paid to foreign agricultural workers in America is far more than they would be able to earn in their homelands, and it allows them to provide better lives for their families. Sat’s native Nepal is a breathtakingly beautiful country, plagued by civil and political unrest.
Predator populations have greatly expanded in numbers and territory across the American West in the last few decades, and livestock producers use a variety of tools, both lethal and non-lethal, in attempt to keep their herds safe. When it comes to protected predators, pastoralists are granted little leeway, and must work with wildlife officials to resolve conflicts. For Mickey’s domestic sheep herds in Wyoming, the primary threat is from grizzly bears and gray wolves. In Africa, the threat is from lions, hyenas, and cheetahs; and in India, leopards and tigers.
A 1920s-era Soviet policy to “eradicate for all time the political, economic and cultural backwardness of the nomad peoples” resulted in the forcible settlement of millions of nomads to collective farms across Central Asia. Use of ancestral lands was prohibited, livestock were killed or gathered for government farms, and guardian animals were destroyed. Survivors eventually returned to the steppes, re-establishing nomadic traditions.
Aralbai is one of a small group of transhumance pastoralists living near the Kazakhstan/Mongolia border who practice the ancient skill of hunting with a golden eagle. Income generated from selling furs harvested by the eagle allows the family to pay for needed services such as medical care.
With a herd started by his family more than a century ago, Albert’s Hereford cattle are uniquely suited to high elevation grazing. Albert is a member of the Green River Cattle Drift, a long-distance migration of cattle from desert grazing allotments in western Wyoming into the mountains of the Upper Green River region and the largest cattle allotment in the National Forest System. Faced with increased governmental regulation, and those opposed to livestock grazing on public lands, the long-term stability of this traditional use of nature’s resources is in jeopardy.
Ephraim tends to his cattle herd in southern Africa. Long-standing pastoral cultures around the globe have special knowledge about their environments. East Africa’s Maasai people have traditional ecological knowledge centered on raising livestock amid wildlife populations, and methods to avoid the transmission of infectious disease between wild and domestic species. They understand the life cycles of not just their herds, as well as the wild herds that share the same environments. But the Maasai are being pushed off their grazing lands by governments promoting ecotourism, the safari industry, and advocates promoting wildlife over indigenous people and their livestock.
Livestock are an important source of household income in rural Turkey, where Musa is a Muslim shepherd. The dyed wool and beaded collar on his sheep are a way to celebrate the animal’s beauty. Musa has a deep affection and pride for these animals that ensure his livelihood. Musa is a champion of a Turkish competition in which he jumps into a large river, calling his herd to follow him as he crosses. The herd does not hesitate to follow Musa, a true shepherd.
Carolina is a firm believer in the practice of low-stress animal handling, and is using livestock grazing as a land management tool. She uses a herd of 700 goats to control invasive weeds around the base of Devils Tower National Monument — our nation’s first such monument. Land managers throughout the world use the grazing of livestock herds in weed and brush control, as well as reducing fuel loads that may lead to catastrophic wildfires.
Adoption of Mongolia’s new constitution in 1992 brought the end of state-owned farms of the socialist era, and freedom to inhabitants of this country boasting the least human population density of any in the world.
Yaks are well suited for surviving the severe conditions associated with Mongolia’s winters. Livestock in this country provide for nearly all needs of pastoral families: milk and meat; fiber for clothing; dung provides fuels for fires; and the animals provide for draught and transportation as well. More than 80 percent of Mongolia’s landmass is used for livestock grazing.
Pedro travels from his native Peru to work in America for much higher wages. There are about 170,000 pastoral households living above 13,000 feet in elevation in Peru’s Andes Mountains. Communal pastures are used for mixed grazing of their livestock herds, including alpaca, llama, and sheep. Herd owners pay a fee of up to 8 cents per animal per year to the community for their households’ right to use the pastures. Pastures are delineated by landmarks, not fences, and borders change as community herds expand and retract. If a herder is hired, he is paid up to $35 per month, plus food and supplies.
Lesotho is a nation entirely surrounded by South Africa, and is regarded as the highest country on earth, with much of this mountainous region accessed only on foot or horseback. Rural life is based on subsistence agriculture, and the economy is based on livestock rearing. It is a Basotho cultural tradition that young boys are sent to the highlands to tend to herds, returning to their villages in their late teens. Lesotho suffers from one of the world’s highest rates of HIV/AIDS, and the importance of the cattle boy’s contribution to his family cannot be overstated.
Paulino is a goat herder in Spain, where transhumance is used as a tool in nature conservation, in recognition that humans and their livestock are as important a part of the landscape as wildlife. The European Union provides a subsidy for livestock producers to own livestock and provides for grazing in designated natural areas and national parks.
European countries are working to reestablish the country’s network of historic migration routes and practices. Many wildlife species also follow these routes, as they have for eons. More than one million cattle are involved in transhumance movements in Spain.
Pastoralists around the globe face unique challenges, yet many share the same basic problem: Livestock herds, and the people who tend them, are being pushed out of traditional grazing areas by governments and by those unwilling to share the range and its resources. While a few countries are actively working to protect pastoralism, and seeking to improve pastoral systems where there are problems; others seemed set to destroy it, creating more chinks in this global humanitarian population and practice.
This exhibit was made possible through the generous support of numerous individuals and organizations. Partial funding is provided by the Wyoming Arts Council and the Wyoming Humanities Council; with sponsorship, administration, and supervision provided by the Wyoming Wool Growers Association and the Green River Valley Museum. United States Artists provided the organizational structure for all other contributions.
Substantial support was received from the following: Don & Mary Jane Abraham, Janell Cannon, Nancy Curtis, Pete & Kathleen Jachowski, Kim Jensen Joseph, Dave & Mary Lankford, Maggie Miller, Janeen McMurtrie, Kem & Shelly Nicolaysen, U.S. Senator Alan K. & Ann Simpson, Albert & Sue Sommers, Laurie Urbigkit, William Urbigkit, Anonymous, Children of the West, Green River Valley Museum, Green River Valley Cattlemen’s Association, Premier 1 Supplies, United States Artists, Wyoming Public Lands Coalition, Wyoming Association of Conservation Districts, Wyoming Stock Growers Association, and Wyoming Women in Ag.
