As the Kenyan media and government talk of "land invasions" by the Maasai who have moved their cattle onto huge white-owned ranches in Laikipia district in search of pasture, has anyone stopped to think that these "lawbreakers" may actually have some lessons in range management to teach the rest of us?

The Maasai system has never ground to a halt because the weather misbehaved. But their system was "interrupted" by colonial settlers and farmers from other African communities. These latter established their own systems, which had nothing to do with the ecological characteristics of the region, but were instead a reflection of production systems practised in their points of origin.

Contemporary agricultural production in Laikipia, as in the other arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) of East Africa, is eminently unsuited to the environmental reality of these rangelands.

This production system emphasises season-after-season cultivation of maize, beans and potatoes, among other food crops, and the keeping of high-grade cattle, poultry, sheep and goats, often in uneconomical landholdings given the low agro-ecological potential of these areas. The potential of these lands, which is determined by rainfall patterns and the nature of the soil, does not encompass season- after-season cultivation.

The Maasai have, traditionally, never been confined by geographical, administrative or surveyors' beacons. History, as taught by the University of Nairobi's Gideon S. Were, tells us that they practised "rational grazing" and only broke their "territorial allegiance" when pasture or water failed.

These pastures were vast and ecologically differentiated. They herded their animals up and down the Rift Valley between the Mau escarpment to the west and the Nyandarua (Aberdares) range to the east, and between Lake Baringo to the north and Central Tanzania to the south. This grazing system made use of both high-potential and marginal lands, ensuring year-long availability of pasture, water and salt licks and so avoiding losses occasioned by sporadic droughts – such as the one Kenya is currently experiencing.

Overgrazing did not occur as the system prevented the overutilisation of the range, which incidentally also reduced the incidence of tick-borne diseases, as animals were not crowded together.

However, this vast range was sharply reduced upon European settlement, when the "Maasai moves" of 1904 and 1911 were introduced. These drove the Maasai southwards and restricted them to the "Southern Reserve". Dry-season grazing was severely affected, while access to livestock watering points was almost completely blocked.

The land area now remaining to the Maasai, infested with tse-tse flies and the East Coast Fever pathogen, had a total area of 37,800,000 hectares, and consisted of: the Liota plains; Nyiri desert, a stretch of land without any surface water system; Ewaso Ngiro, with a river which was fed by several tributaries and flowed through a deep gorge and through swamps; and the northern face of Mt Kilimanjaro, with no rivers but intermittent streams ending in swamps.

This region has a semi-arid climate and is characterised by relatively low rainfall (254 to 508 millimetres annually) and very long dry seasons. This rain often falls with great intensity and is very irregular in its incidence. Daily and seasonal temperature fluctuations are very wide, humidity is low, and there is a high intensity of radiation due to the dry atmosphere and the clear skies.

These climatic conditions are more suited to livestock production than to any other form of agriculture. The semi-arid areas are suited to sheep, goats, indigenous cattle and camels, while in the driest areas, wild game may be the most suitable exploiter of the environment.

The indigenous breeds reared by the Maasai have a natural ability to cope with this ecology. They are able to preserve a thermal balance between gain from the environment during the day and heat loss to the environment at night.

The high-grade cattle kept by ranchers and sedentary communities, on the other hand, are only able to attain some cooling by way of laborious panting. They have no in-built mechanism to survive the semi-arid climate and have to undergo acclimatisation, which is only possible with good management and a thorough understanding of the physiological reactions and changes in animal behaviour brought about by these climatic anomalies. This understanding is, however, not possessed by most Kamaus, Mutisos or Mugires.

Maasai cattle also exhibit a grazing behaviour that is "sensitive" to the ecology, utilising the available vegetal matter most efficiently and economically. For instance, high temperatures depress their feed intake, unlike with hybrid cattle. Again, Maasai cattle respond to the decreased water content of the available foliage by walking farther and farther to obtain adequate feed and water.

This often results in misunderstandings and conflicts over grazing land – as is happening today. The scanty understanding among officialdom of the intricate cultural and social realities of the nomadic pastoralist and how he responds to the inadequacies in the physical environment, has never been more apparent than in the past few weeks.

Till today, we find "experts" and officials saying that it has taken the Maasai inordinately long to adopt "modernity." Inaccurate, romanticised images of their way of life still enjoy much currency. Two scholars, Allan Jacobs and John Gallaty state, separately, that pastoral Maasai saw themselves as people of leisure and were opposed to their agricultural neighbours, the "Umek," whom they regarded as "people of labour". They observe that the Maasai abhor digging the land and eating the direct products of agriculture, and attribute this to "religious conviction and cosmological orientation!"

Others speak in terms of Maasai's "peculiar attachment" to cattle – the "cattle complex culture".

But attachment to one's culture should not be seen as irrational. The Maasai are a pragmatic people whose attempt to adjust to the harsh and inhospitable environment has led to occupation of ranches in Laikipia today.

Their movement, as observed by P.R. Baker, is a matter of necessity arising from the physical environment. There is little evidence of a romantic attachment to endless movement or to cattle. Such migration is due to lack of water, shortage of forage where annual grasses disappear, increase in biting flies and mosquitoes and the occurence of diseases such as East Coast fever.

A range with as low as 300mm annual rainfall, which is irregularly spread over the years, does not permit the forsaking of nomadism for an alternative form of land use. The herds of nomadic pastoralists all over East Africa are often decimated by disease, droughts or cattle raids. Because of this, the prudent nomad retains as much livestock as possible. These numbers are often augmented and sustained by, strangely enough, raids. Such raids are not displays of unreasonable aggression, but an understandable form of "loss adjustment" that is part of an overall survival strategy. The Maasai are occupying other people's ranches as part of this survival strategy. "For few people in the world is the problem of survival so immediate or stark," Baker comments.

Politicians from sedentary communities may shout themselves hoarse over the "illegality" of the Maasai's actions, but few quite understand what is at stake here. Even for those with Maasai blood – Ole Ntimama and company – the easy life of the town may have dimmed this feeling. The ordinary Maasai is aware that he is the "least insulated individual on earth." If his animals die from the drought, he has no alternative means of support for his family in the hostile environment.

To address this crisis, he must draw on a rich lore based on "bitter fruits of experience and a detailed knowledge of the physical environment." But as this knowledge is often backed by simple material culture, it is often damned as "primitive."

The real strength of the community, as Baker says, "lies in what we cannot see; what is contained in the heads of the elders, what is sung to the children and what outsiders label as tradition."

Tradition, for nomadic pastoralists, is a warranty against the unpredictable environment. It is followed not because the present generation of pastoralists knows nothing else, but because long and cruel experience has taught that these are the best rules to follow. This knowledge, this experience, is often ignored or scorned. Indeed, few development "experts" ever approach a pastoralist for this experience.

This attitude is an offshoot of colonial habits of thought. In East Africa today, we see a nauseating hybrid of traditional and modern economic modes that has driven pastoral communities to the edge of extinction and turned their rangelands into deserts.

In parts of East Africa, it was the state that gave Maasai land to African sedentary farmers or to European settlers such as the ones occupying sprawling ranches in Laikipia. The Maasai have also been lured by the prospect of monetary gains to sell part of the more habitable lands to migrating sedentary communities. Much of the dry-season grazing lands have therefore become the private property of other people. At the same time, arbitrary boundaries parcelled the Maasai country out among the current East African states.

All this has reduced the mobility of the Maasai pastoralist. Subsequent policy and legislation have failed to recognise the fundamental role of mobility to the nomadic system. The situation is further worsened by a continuing expansion of cultivation by sedentary communities with encouragement from largely discriminatary post-independence regimes.

The old symbiosis between the pastoralist and the sedentary farmer has broken down; suspicion and occasionally bloody conflict have taken its place, fanned by politicians with a self-aggrandising agenda.

There has also been a gradual collapse of the old relationship between man, animal and the environment. New technologies have, to a significant extent, eliminated previous checks on herd size and population in the rangelands.

In addition, lack of water has been addressed by provision of water from deep acquifers; vaccines have been developed, while peace, which has been enforced by East African governments, has, largely, reduced the incidence of raids and warfare. Herds have increased tremendously with no concomitant pasture development.

The current drought is nothing new. Drought is a fact of life in the Maasai pastoral system. But the Maasai can no longer cope with it, as their ability to withstand droughts has been diminished by forces and pressures that have nothing to do with them as a community.

East Africa needs to develop an alternative form of livestock management that incorporates the Maasai's age-old survival techniques. Sedentary communities who have become an integral part of this semi-arid environment should not cling rigidly to their "temperate" mentality. They can learn a thing or two from the Maasai.

Nor would it hurt if developmentalists shed their classroom indoctrination with the Western analysis of our environment and its unique problem-solving system.

*John G. Mbaria is an environmental planner and freelance writer. E-mail: i mbajo@uon.africaonline.com