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<\/figure>\n\nKaselj\u2019s donkeys eat young juniper (Juniperus oxycedrus<\/em>), as well as soft shoots of more mature juniper plants. In addition to his donkeys, this herder also has 40-ish goats which he keeps for dairy production, as well as two cows. His goats also graze on older parts of juniper plants, says Kaselj.<\/p>\n\n Thanks to this rich mixed flock the grassland at Je\u017eevi\u0107 dry field will be improved as these animals graze on juniper bushes \u2013 the main cause of recession of fields on Dinara \u2013 but as the local flocks grow in both number and types of grazing animals, especially donkeys, the process of overgrowing by woody vegetation will be significantly slowed down. However, complete restoration and increase of grassland areas which are overgrown by bushes can only be achieved by controlled burning and manual removal of woody vegetation, which would then be followed by grazing. There, the donkeys would eat any new shoots thus preventing the woody plants from taking hold again. <\/p>\n\n Our project flock was formed in order to slow down and stop further overgrowing using targeted grazing and so far. So far, we have had 6 contracts with local cattle-herders signed. These herders have a lease on land within the project areas that also overlap with the habitats of stone-curlew (Burhinus oedicnemus) and short-toed Lark (Calandrella brachydactyla) \u2013 the bird species whose protection is the main goal behind this project. In order to reduce selective grazing, we encourage acquisition of animals with different grazing preferences as this allows us to target more intense grazing on woody plants, primarily juniper which is the main plant found in overgrown areas. As local herders mainly keep sheep, goats, or cows, we encouraged them to consider getting more hoofed animals such as donkeys to complete the flock and maximise grazing efficiency. With the support from the project the herders were able to add additional 22 horses and donkeys to their already existing flocks, thus raising the total project flock number to around 880 animals \u2013 760 sheep, 90 goats, nine cows, and the aforementioned horses and donkeys. We\u2019re hoping the herders will continue to keep mixed flocks even after the project finishes in summer 2023 and that the number of horses and donkeys will keep increasing due to natural growth. This will ensure grassland overgrowing will be slowed on a long-term scale. If we also manage to affect the practices and legal framework concerning manual woody vegetation removal combined with grazing, it could make a significant difference and shift on a local scale of the overgrowth trend we\u2019re currently seeing, at least on the project area. <\/p>\n\n ————————————————————————————<\/p>\n\n We\u2019re developing our project flock in cooperation with local herders who own or lease the land in areas important as habitats for the project birds, these areas being Je\u017eevi\u0107 dry field i Kijevo dry field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our project flock is growing \u2013 three new donkeys will improve grazing efforts, and we\u2019ve had a new local cattle-herder join the project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5071,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,25,26],"tags":[143,183,166],"class_list":["post-5196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activity-calendar","category-activity-calendar-home","category-news","tag-cattle-breeding","tag-cattle-herders","tag-service-flock"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dinarabacktolife.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Dizajn-bez-naslova-2022-04-06T152944.388.jpg\")
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