Grazing and climatic variability in Sajama National Park, Bolivia

Sajama National Park, the first protected area in Bolivia, includes five indigenous communities with a primary production base of pastoralism. The semi-arid region of the Central Andes is one of the most extreme areas of human occupation at 4200 meters altitude and affected by high climatic variability. This paper studies the relations between climate variability, resilience, biodiversity of pastures and pastoral production in Sajama National Park. We present a botanical study of palatable pasture herbs between two years, one humid (2006) and the other dry (2007). Thirty vascular plants were recorded. The number of species and the cover of iro (Festuca ortophylla) peak in areas of intermediate disturbance; areas that are at a medium distance from camelid corrals. On the other hand, the cover of ephemeral plants between tussocks increases in high disturbance areas. This is interpreted as a result of the tradeoff between the damage of grazing and the benefit of the fertilization produced by the herding animals. The local people clearly perceive strong impacts of climate change, combined with changes in management and human pressures. The social dynamics and production management, combined with climate warming, water reduction, and the increasing variability of surface water regimes create potential risks for the local sustainability of pastoralism.