In this article we examine bush encroachment in a savanna ecosystem of the lower Omo Valley occupied by Mursi agro-pastoralists. Focusing on the role of fire and grazing, the main anthropogenic disturbance factors in the savanna, we compare the results of our ecological surveys with Mursi perceptions and understandings of environmental change. The main change descr...

Since the 1960s, the lower Omo Valley of southwestern Ethiopia has been imagined by conservationists as a “wilderness”, in need of urgent protection from the damaging impact of human activity. For state officials it has been an unproductive wasteland, inhabited by violence prone “nomads”, in need of the political control and civilizing influence of the state. For l...