The affective factors on pastures destruction and identifying its protection aproaches

Pastures which cover around 25 and 55 percent of total area of the Earth and Iran, respectively, play a significant role in supplying livestock production, food security, protecting natural ecosystem, job creation, increasing the income of villagers and nomads, amplification of underground water reservoir, flood prevention and so on. These cause pastures to be referred as a key factor for sustainable development of countries. This present descriptive-analytical research is conducted with the aim of identifying the affective factors on pastures destruction and their protection approaches. The required information for studying 60 domestic and foreign articles as well as sites and relevant reports are gathered. The results reveal that several factors are involved in deterioration of pastures which can have different effects based on location and temporal conditions of various countries and regions. The most important factors are the increase of number of livestock and the absence of balance between livestock and pastures, premature grazing, transforming pastures to agricultural lands, continuous grazing, fire, bush cutting, military maneuvers, road construction and construction operations, weak management factors and the absence of effective dissuasive laws and regulations for pastures protections, drought, reduction of economic power and poverty of local communities, irregularities in and decrement of rainfalls, non-implementation of rangeland plans and insufficient attention to people’s cooperation in preparation of such plans, lack of local knowledge utilization in pastures protection and decomposition of traditional and native social structures of beneficiaries. Finally, based on the findings, some solutions for pastures protection areproposed.