The effects of disturbing variation

I spent some time in the game farming region of Limpopo (South Africa) recently. The dirt roads meander through the bush in a corridor of high game fences.  Every few kilometers another fence disappears into the bush at right angles.  The road signs tell about lodges, breeders, exotic game, lion, and hunting.  Each farm size is a few thousand hectares, an acceptable economical size.  The farms are managed well with a great involvement of the owner and game is very well looked after.  People are proud of the condition of their zebra, impala, wildebeest, eland, sable, buffalo and rhino (the very rich owners).

The current demand is for disease-free buffalo with large bosses for breeding (highest price to date is R40m in 2013), black impala, sable with extra-long swept back horns and golden springbok.  You can get elephant for free if you have the right fencing and if you can transport them.

When you visit one of these lodges you will invariably find a lion camp for a pride of lion.  The lions are fed with game that is hunted in some areas of the farm or with animals that have died.

During the frequent droughts, food is bought for the game and there are feeding points at waterholes close to the lodges. Sometimes the grass is cut in a wet season to store for use during droughts.

Teams of labourers work at clearing away opportunistic plants that are threatening the growth of grass.

The main way in this industry is to turn a natural system that thrives on variation at all the levels into local optima that need constant management intervention to achieve performance.  An antifragile system has been turned into being very fragile.

This is an example of the core problem that exists in all systems.  The current practice of trying to maximise local optima.  It cannot be sustained.