Journal Brief

Abstract

In livestock production development areas in Uganda, efforts are made to control or eliminate grass fires, with the main intention of preserving the standing crop for cattle utilization. Investigations at Muko Range Experimental Station, Ankole, Uganda reveals no advantage to the cattle in burning off the dry grass and utilizing the regrowth. In fact, on such young grass, the cattle showed a requirement for roughage (unpublished data). It is often noticed that, with the cessation of burning, comes a great increase in the amount of woody vegetation (West, 1968), although this is not invariable. The density of Acacia hockii de Wild can be over 4,000 per ha. under an annual burning regime (Harrington, 1973b), most of which are plants of <0.5 m. When burning is prevented these plants can develop rapidly into thicket which is difficult to penetrate. Photographs of the problem in Ankole are shown in Harrington (1973a). Such scenes are a severe worry to graziers and government officials, concerned with livestock production and, in Uganda, bush control trials have been conducted for more than 15 years. Relative success against A. hockii has been reported by Harrington (1973a) using a picloram/2, 4 – D formulation, but early indications of the effect on cattle growth rates have not been maintained, which calls for this note of caution.