Food and Environment

by Yadav Sharma Bajagai Summery   Millions of sheep and kangaroos share the same habitat in the sheep rangelands of southern Australia and dietary competition between these two species has been a matter of concern to pastoralists, conservation ecologists and animal scientists for long time. This issue has been tried to be addressed in this article. It is found that sheep and kangaroos both positively select grass and forb resulting considerable overlapping in their diet during flush season. But when grasses are in short supply during drought, sheep are forced to eat more of less preferred vegetation (chenopods). Sheep are more flexible than kangaroos to shift into chenopods and other shrubs decreasing the overlap in diet during dry season. Dietary competition is not significant when pasture biomass production is high (>30 g DM/m 2 ) but it requires due attention when there is low biomass production during drought. Issue has been discussed and recommendation has been d