Turkish Journal of Range and Forage Science

Abstract

In Turkey, the quality and production power of the rangelands have decreased over time by uncontrolled grazing, carelessness and without improvement of rangelands in time because they are medium benefited. Sustainability has not been achieved in rangeland improvement and management projects that implemented by the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry for last 20 years. Mistakes concerning to grazing of animals are effective on the basis of both gradual reduction of the current classes of existing vegetations and the lack of improvements in the rehabilitated ones. Attention should be paid to the grazing time and intensity, animal distribution and animal species in order to use the rangelands correctly. Failure to comply with any of these principles causes rangelands to tend to deteriorate. Generally, problems are not to be faced in terms of the selection of the species of animals will be grazed in the rangelands in Turkey. On the other hand, animal distribution would be a problem in the vicinity of the settlement and water resources; otherwise, there is not any major problem in other areas. Heavy grazing appears as an important problem in the rangelands of some settlement areas where the number of animals is high. However, this is not the main factor causing deterioration of the most rangelands. Because approximately 75% of the land is evaluated for grazing the animals in Turkey. In contrast, untimely grazing is one of the most destructive effects on rangelands vegetation. Untimely or yearlong grazing causes serious damage to plants that do not produce enough photosynthesis tissue. On the other hand, it disrupts the soil-water-air-nutrient element balance for a long time by causing deterioration of the soil structure. This causes destructive effects, especially, in good plants and the condition of the rangelands is gradually decreasing. Consequently, firstly, observing the grazing season will solve at least half of the issues related to the deterioration and sustainability in range management.