O reprezentatywności długoletnich, interdyscyplinarnych badań pasterstwa w Czarnohorze
On the representativeness of long-time, interdisciplinary research upon shepherding in the Chornohora

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses chosen results of the third part of long-time, interdisciplinary studies on Hutsul summer farming in the Chornohora mountains, published in a book titled Pasterstwo w Czarnohorze (the English title: Shepherding in the Chornohora). Janusz Gudowski (the book’s editor) claims that the representativeness of the research carried out by his team in a small part of the Chornohora (Mt Kukul), is high, which is a matter of discussion here. The paper’s author argues with the applied research approach, which does not take into consideration a possible variation of economic relations in different grazing seasons and its influence on summer farming change. Examples of changes investigated during this research, and caused by such a variation, are discussed in the paper as a separate category of interdisciplinary study results, which cannot be extrapolated outside the study area. Treating such results as representative could give a false view of summer farming changes. Above all, the study area used in this interdisciplinary research cannot be recognized in author’s opinion as representative, when only relatively small secondary grasslands were investigated, resulting, among others, in overrepresentation of cattle farms as well as a lack of secondary succession symptoms. Among the most important features of the Chornohora summer livestock farming, not represented in the study area, and not described in this book, are sheep grazing in general (despite the English title of this book, only cattle grazing was investigated during this research) and communal grazing, both sheep and cattle. A different view on the role of long-time pasture ownership changes (1999–2014) and relations between the nature protection and summer farming in the Chornohora (two protected areas with different protection zones) is also presented in this paper.

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