Pastoral Husbandry in Ariège: Animal Vulnerability on Rangelands, Adaptations to Accompaniment Measures of the Brown Bear (Ursus artos) Reintroduction and Conservation Plan in French Pyrenees 2006-2009 and Farming System evolutions

1.1.4 Production's means, operating mode, products, social, technical and spatial considerations

The main floral component of rangelands, grass, exists to be grazed, and over time co-adapts to both intensity and quality of grazing. Agro-ecological conditions and pastoral resources characteristics are variable and unforeseeable. This is determinant in the constitution of socio-economic means of support of pastoral communities. Long-term evolutionary history of a grassland ecosystem as well as history of last few centuries is therefore essential to understanding its response both to management and to new pressures on it. Traditional pastoralists broadly accept pasture and rainfall as a given and adapt their social and herding systems to take best advantage of them.

Among the 5 major herbivorous' producing areas of France, Midi Pyrenees is at the top with 856,000 sheep, 1.4 million cattle, 37,930 horses. For the year 2000, grazing livestock of Pyrenean massif were constituted by 60% of farms (more than 6,000 pastoral^6(*) farms) and total forage area more than 80% individual Useful Agricultural Area (UAA). Concerning pastoralism, 575,000 ha (one-third of the massif's area) were used for collective and individual MSP. In cow farming, the use of Gasconne breed, the local rustic breed, is predominant in most cases; the herds are conducted in purebred. Herds are generally crossed naturally with scarce usage of Artificial Insemination (AI). Some herds do not include bull, as was in the past common in flocks' region. In some cases, mating is held only during summering in a collective herd with bull. Reproductive timing oppose calving beginning in the spring (calving in March or April), classical in the region, to early calving (calving from early January to February 15^th). A first objective is to locate mating period at time when grass' growth allows cows to put weight after winter, which has often drawn on their body condition score, which will improve fertility. It is also to obtain enough early calving to send all animals in MSP in June.

MSP condition the mountain farms' functioning because they provide the whole diet during at least three months of the year. Depending to different criteria, many sub-systems as well as many products are mentioned in the mountain stock farms. «Broutard» remains the main management and selling mode of young animals. This is in respect of different needs: save resources, reduce work loads... Because of "economy and autonomy'', herds' management in the years 70 was based on the maximum use of environmental assets. Concerning guarding, basically, there are tight guard (also called "stick planted") to keep the flock together on favourable relief (concave or flat) based on sheepdogs. Open-weave guarding consists to leave more deployment's space to the herd so that it constitutes a complete diet on a more difficult milieu due to its overgrown status, its irregular relief, and its poor grass recovery. For example, it is the most appropriate guarding system in late summer. At last, dropped-headed guarding consists to guide the flock; give the "bias", then let it unroll its grazing network on an area that animals are familiar (Garde and al., 2005. Garde and al., 2007).

It is evident that if you ask to an Ariège's inhabitant and farmer what are your production means? You will understand; they are: The beasts, MSP, pastoral group, pastoral land association, me and machinery. This underlines the mixture of individual and collective management system for each farmer, and its relation or dependence to MSP. In fact, Ariège's pastoral system is distinguished by its socioeconomic and cultural link to MSP. Ariège's MSP grades from 1,200 to near to 3,200m altitude and cover about 140,000ha, most often of poor quality. They are pastureland with relatively limited level of equipments and technical management modalities, compared to the Alps and Massif Central for example. Management of intermediate zone^7(*) is today, scarcer and more difficult because of invasion by shrubs. However, due to individual management techniques, which favour early ascension and late coming down, it is not astonishing to see that livestock lives farm areas early May and come down again at the first snows. Nevertheless, in general, ascension for summering is current from May 20^th to June 15^th and coming down from October 1^st to 30^th, respectively for cattle and sheep. The two Ariège's valleys Couserans and Haute Ariège correspond to mountain zones highly affected by Agricultural abandonment. Here, the principal orientation of farms is livestock breastfeeding, bovine or ovine, extensively gathered. In summary, according to the Ariège pastoral federation (2007), pastoralism in 2003-2004 was: 57 pastoral land associations (24,000ha; 53,000 landholders; 55,000 plots), 75 pastoral group (280 pastoral units; 124,000ha; 853 transhumant breeders (387 cow, 270 sheep, 185 horses and 11 goats keepers with 17,325; 50,681; 1,976 and 158 animal respectively); 50 herdsmen, 23 missions for transport by helicopter (30 tons of Goods), 11 transports by packsaddle (5 tons).

1.1.4.1 Study of farming systems

Reasoned management and exploitation of genetic resources in their natural environment often dictates to exceed the only framework of species and to take into account the context /... / within environmental or agricultural systems. It is in that sense that Lasseur (2008^8(*)) consider the local technique culture, and its declination particular in terms of livestock (local stocking system) as a "filter" that led farmers to interpret changes in production conditions defined in a macro economic level. This interpretation helps to define new practices that these farmers will be willing to implement. Pasture to be understood and used for environmental management must be considered in spatial and temporal scales unusual for agriculture and animal husbandry disciplines (B. Besche-Commenge, 2008; Balent and al., 1998). Many farms in Ariège are pastoral farms. Pastoralism is an original production which is guided by the interaction between men, herd and territory, its complexity results from the interaction and existence of different management objectives between: "Manager" (shepherd, breeder, rural community which regulates the form of land use communal and private); vegetation and animals (Landais and Balent, 1995).

* ⁶ Eychenne, 2006

* ⁷ Formerly meadow to mow or pasturelands of close season for individual grazing and now gathering of various private landholders for collective grazing, it permit the extension of summering period

* ⁸ http://doc.abhatoo.net.ma/doc/IMG/pdf/caracteriser_pratiques_eleveurs.pdf