The desertification of the Mongolian Gobi Desert is commonly blamed for everything from Beijing’s dust-storms to degrading pastures. But the story is more complicated than is often recognised, and it is possible that levels of degradation have been overestimated. This paper suggests that teasing out the causes and affects of degradation in the Mongolian Gobi Desert is difficult, and policy-makers and development agencies need to be cautious in designing interventions based upon the common perceptions of degradation.

In northern Australia’s semi-arid grazing regions, livestock are moved around the landscape as one way of coping with variability and uncertainty. This paper explores the role of livestock mobility in modern times amongst the suite of grazier strategies for coping with resource variability in space and time. Having diversity in coping strategies is important, and in this context, the mobility that ‘agistment’ allows adds something distinctive and crucial to the mix.

Satellite positioning systems such as the GPS have catapulted the study of animal behaviour into the world of microchip technology. By collecting an animal’s raw location data every second it is possible to accurately distinguish stationary, foraging and walking activities of free ranging cows. These data provide information that can be used to pro-actively manage cattle on landscapes in near real-time.

There is little information on the circadian grazing behaviour and grazing strategy of free-ranging herds in Mediterranean grasslands. In this study it is shown that the grazing strategy of beef cows is determined by the interaction between terrain, the distribution of the herbage mass and the nutritive value of the herbage. Such information on the interrelationships between landscape and animal grazing behaviour can contribute to the rational management of such grassland systems for attaining multiple goals.

Grazing by cattle is the most wide-spread land use in northern Australia, and there is surprisingly little information on how this affects the native fauna. We sampled a long-term grazing experiment in Queensland over 5 years apart, to investigate how stocking rates influences fauna relative to fire and rainfall. There was a relative change in abundance of 33 species across the two survey periods, and changes in 16 species could be explained by grazing and vegetation effects. As pastoral development in northern Australia increases, the continued research on biodiversity impacts is critical.

The deliberate spread of exotic pasture plants for pastoral production into savanna woodlands may have a negative effect on native vegetation. We sampled sites with an increasing level of Indian Couch Bothriochloa pertusa to record how the native plant diversity changed. Sites with moderate to high cover of this introduced grass had a reduced cover and richness of native species. The exact mechanism of this change was a combination of plant competition, overstocking and rainfall. The continued spread of exotic pasture species for agriculture has the potential to cause significant changes to rangeland biodiversity.

Fire, as a common feature in rangelands, prevents the invasion of woody species into grass-dominated ecosystems. In the present study we addressed the question of whether different fire frequencies had different effects on woody species in semiarid rangelands of central Argentina. Our results suggest that a controlled burn every 3–4 years permits the control of woody species cover, height and canopy area, which in turn may favour the production of desirable perennial grasses used in livestock production.

Hyparrhenia hirta (Coolatai grass) is a perennial tussock grass, native to southern Africa and the Mediterranean region, which has invaded areas of native flora in Australia in recent decades. A two-year field study of seed and seedling dynamics under different treatments (e.g. mowing, herbicide and no management) has helped in understanding its population dynamics. Results indicate that some form of direct control of established H. hirta plants in combination with providing appropriate grazing management to encourage competition between grasses will assist in the control of H. hirta.

This paper reports the prey detected in 1,460 dingo scats collected from five sites in north-eastern Australia. Macropods, possums and bandicoots were found to be common prey supporting the generalisation that dingoes prefer medium- to large-sized prey when available. However, these data also show that novel and unexpected prey species appear in dingo diets as preferred prey become unavailable suggesting that the frequency of prey remains in scats can be an unreliable indicator of predation risk.

Coolibah woodlands in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, are a federally listed endangered ecological community due to a history of clearing. Dense regeneration of coolibah is listed as an ‘invasive native species’ in NSW under the assumption that clearing dense coolibah will maintain or improve biodiversity. We found that dense coolibah patches contain similar plant species and soil properties to the remnant woodland state. We suggest that clearing dense regeneration would not necessarily improve or maintain biodiversity nor increase compositional similarity with remnant woodlands.