“Mom, don't draw me a sheep, but a mouflon...!”

According to some assessments, the Maghreb is one of the Mediterranean regions most affected by human activity. Pastoralism, a dominant activity of the Berber populations in place since prehistory, is undoubtedly the essential cause. Agriculture only effectively intervened in North Africa with the advent of the Phoenicians, then the Romans. Even if certain crops have definitively established themselves (cereals, fruit trees, vines), the Arab conquest and then the French occupation amplified in their turn the breeding of sheep and goats, the number of which has only increased to the present day, where it is exponential and in total inadequacy with the available resources, even in good years of useful rain. The Maghreb, including Morocco, has therefore never enjoyed a rational use of the soil, and the beginnings of the degradation of forest landscapes are ancient. Fortunately, and now sta…