A participant in the PRACTICE and IDESSA projects, Mr Olivier provides access to his farms for fieldwork in order to study restoration practices.

His farm Jones, is allocated in the semi-dry Savanna of Southern-Africa and was involved in many projects of the North West University.  The study’s was to revile the impact on Bush Encroachment on pasture productivity on pastures in the Molopo district of the North West Province in South Africa.  Bush Encroachment in the region leads to external habitat transformation with a definite loss of grass cover.  The decrease in the pasture productivity has led to that Mr Johan Olivier had to do active restoration steps to better his grazing capacity and the increase in woody plants (bush Encroachment) to control and to prevent economic losses.The study’s form part of the multi national PRACTICE– (“Prevention and restoration actions to combat desertification: an integrated assessment”) and IDESSA (“An Integrative Decision Support System for Sustainable Range land Management in Southern African Savannas”) projects. The reason for the study’s are for restoration practices (for example chemical control measures of woody plants) that was implemented to evaluate the climate change. The result of the study’s are to see the Grazing Capacity and the density of woody plants under rotational grazing and chemical control to see a more balanced savanna systems of important key resources for both grass- and leave species.