Ideal Free Distributions of Mobile Pastoralists in Multiple Seasonal Grazing Areas

The pastoral system in the Far North Region of Cameroon is best described as an open system in which mobile pastoralists have open access to common-pool grazing resources. We hypothesized that there is a self-organizing management system of open access to common-pool grazing resources and predicted that we would find an Ideal Free Distribution (IFD) of mobile pastoralists within seasonal grazing areas. In this paper we used mobility data and remote sensing data from two seasonal grazing areas at the end of the dry season in three consecutive years to evaluate that hypothesis. We found evidence of an IFD in the two seasonal grazing areas of the Logone Floodplain and the Lake Maga area. These findings offer further support for our hypothesis that there is a complex adaptive system in which pastoralists distribute themselves effectively over available grazing resources.