Author: Dr Raziq Kakar

Why native flora diversity is better than monoculture forest for replantation

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My point of view

I always emphasized to please plant the native flora for replantation, and reforestation. Even, in the cities, parks, lawns, schools, hospitals, and universities. It will give a positive impact on the environment and nature. It will provide better habitat to the local or native biodiversity such as; birds, bugs, insects, lizards, herbivores, and others. https://arkbiodiv.com/2022/01/23/native-shrubs-are-the-best-for-the-municipal-and-homes-beautifications/amp/

Beautiful Emirates' Tree
Wherever you walk in the desert, you will see and meet the beautiful wooden flora, Prosopis. These trees act as a source of landmarks and help as GPS for livestock and wild animals.

I’m a desert, rangelands, and livestock ecologist, always promoting the idea to develop the grazing lands with native biodiversity. In the meanwhile, I suggested many times to use native flora for plantation even in the parks, lawns, and other places as I mentioned above. Here is an example of the Morning Glory (Convolvulus cephalopods) which can give beauty at very low costs as it is resistant to drought and pestshttps://arkbiodiv.com/2022/03/03/the-beautiful-morning-glory-convolvulus-cephalopods-in-the-desert-of-alain-uae/amp/.

This is a very good article that supports my opinion

With the title as; “Managing forests for competing goals” the Science magazine published an article based on the findings of Feng et al. Feng et al. synthesized a dataset from several hundred publications across six continents to determine whether multispecies planting had advantages over monocultures in productivity. They found that growth and productivity were substantially greater when multiple tree species were grown together compared with monocultures, echoing findings in natural systems of positive relationships between productivity and plant biodiversity. They attribute their results to niche complementarity when different plant forms—such as deciduous and needle-leafed trees—are grown together. Collectively, the studies by Hua et al. and Feng et al. suggest that more complex, multispecies plantations may offer the promise of higher productivity while at least in part supporting biodiversity and providing ecosystem services. Replacing native forests with plantations, even multispecies plantations, cannot fully restore biodiversity, but well-designed forest restorations may support important ecological and conservation goals while providing economic value. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8463

Native sheep breed of Balochistan Pakistan
Native livestock breeds are highly resilient and sustain their productivity in limited resources

I have been documenting, analyzing, and reporting the worth of native flora in the context of biodiversity, food (for us and livestock), environmental support, and another aspect of goodness. Here is the link to my general article about the goodness of trees and other flora.

https://arkbiodiv.com/2020/10/14/71-goodness-of-the-trees-my-deep-ethnoecological-philosophy/amp/
I’m giving a field presence in a video about the possible use of Haloxyllon sp for hedging in the parks, lawns, and beautification places. I’m also continuously writing on Twitter for the goodness of our Mother Earth and huminity.

CELEBRATING AFRICA DAY UNDER THE FOOD SECURITY CHALLENGE

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Twitter Space – Africa Day and Food Security

Food security is a challenge almost in all the vulnerable regions of the world including Africa. The food security challenge is very genuine but the continent is rich with fertile soil, genetic resources, and the strong muscles of the youths. I gave 3 thematic talks, which you can read in the ensuing line.

#AfricaDay#AfricaDay2022 Just spoke in the space made by @nourish_africa as strengthening the resilience of nutrition and food security. I discussed 3 themes to ensure a sustainable food system under emerging climatic and political conditions.

  1. Bring the youth back to agriculture and farming. There should be a farming emergency as the food prices are going up and up. Each youth should have mandatory training in farming. Farming should be declared as a sport as well, giving prizes and appreciation to the winners.
  2. Africa and other places as well should rely on native genetic resources for food and agriculture for a sustainable food supply. The native genetic resources need very low inputs, have no negative impact on soil health, and are highly adapted to the local climatic conditions.
  3. Some portions of family food must come from their own produce. It can be 0.1 100%. Each family should be a producer but not only a consumer. Also, farming must be mandatory as military training in some countries.

NEW OR OLD ROLE – THE DONKEY IS A FARM GUARDIAN IN AFRICA

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We celebrate world donkey day each year on 8 May. https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/world-donkey-day/#:~:text=World%20Donkey%20Day%20is%20the,improve%20their%20quality%20of%20life.

This year for the first time, we arranged a space on Twitter to talk and share the facts and information about the donkey. The main interest was shown by the African farmers. A friend from Namibia told us about the new task of the donkey as a farm guardian. He claimed that even the Cheetah can’t harm the livestock protected by the donkeys. https://arkbiodiv.com/2022/05/08/first-donkey-twitter-space-in-history-world-donkey-day-8-may-2022/amp/

My ecology friend Sam has shared the link about the donkey encountering the wild predators and bravely counteracting them.

Donkey killing hyena and coyote 

Here is the link to read about the history of the world donkey day. https://arkbiodiv.com/2021/05/08/the-story-of-world-donkey-day/amp/ Donkey is multipurpose livestock, been used for ages for work, food, recreation, hobby, sports, and other purposes but is still, a very important role of this unique creature is hiding from the eyes of the majority of the people, that is its’ ecological role. To highlight the importance of donkeys, we introduced and launched the world donkey day.

Not only food but also the ecosystem management – The camel is a player in the desert

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Livestock and the Symbiotic Relationship

Livestock grazing plays a pivotal role in ecosystem revitalization and management. A strong symbiotic relationship exists between all players in the ecosystem and livestock is one of the most important players. Here I’m showing you (video with a youtube link) how the camels give life to the desert’s flora. Camels inject a unique microbiome into the desert’s plants while browsing which gives strength, vigor, and resilience to the flora. Here is the link to a video, please watch it and give your feedback.

The camels browsing on the deserts’ flora early in the morning in UAE.

It is a hazy and dusty morning in the United Arab Emirates. The camels are browsing the sparsely available vegetation of the desert. They are happy and eat the beautiful and nutritious bush of Tribulus, the yellow flowers, and the green twigs. The camel eats the plants and injects super and unique microorganisms into the plants to revitalize their health. The camel converts the intake into manure, giving food to the soil’s microbiome. In return, the microbiome synthesizes simple food for the flora rhizospheres, and the roots reabsorb the simple nutrients from the rhizosphere.

The grazing lands have stronger flora than the restricted area

I have my personal experience, the region which is grazing restricted has very poor and unthrifty shrubs but the open grazing areas have very strong, well-adapted, and healthy flora. For so long, we had no rains but still, you can see the shrubs and bushes smiling happily in this hazy morning because of the soil richness. We have to understand the symbiotic relationship between plants and animals, the microbiome, and soil to give a better future to Mother Earth by giving livestock again its original task of ecosystem management with grazing.

HOT DEBATE – IF CAMEL URINE HAS THERAPEUTIC VALUE?

Dr Raziq Kakar4 Comments

Camel4Life International Group

The camel4life international is a group of camelists (scientists, academics, farmers, activists, businessmen, student, farmers, etc) advocating camel aspects, especially the milk. We are a major think tank of the camelids’ world. Time to time we have serious and hot debates as the salts requirements and tolerance, camel milk and its therapeutic potential, camel role in ecosystem management, etc. But now we have rather very serious, hot and complicated issue, the CAMEL URINE. https://camel4all.info

How the debate started?

in response to Christina Adams, Fatima Ramadan from Egypt responded as “This is excellent, there is research we are working on to extract nanoparticles from camel urine to treat cancer..on 🐀“

And then debate started and turned into hot discussion with each moment of time. I hereby share the link of the post, published on the website of camel4life.info.

Here is the link of the full length article.

https://camel4all.info/index.php/blog/

I invite you to take part in discussion. I wish we give our feedback and inputs. We should not go in personal hot argument but discuss with the scientific findings, traditional knowledge, cultural and religious philosophies. Please give your feedback in the comments box below.