There are two apparent contradictions in the title of this paper. First, grazing by domestic livestock is often considered to be hostile to nature conservation, especially in semi-arid areas (the ongoing conflict between ranchers and environmentalists in western USA, as described by Gillis (1991) is just one contemporary example of this). Second, the aims of conservation and development (in the sense of reclamation) would also appear to be contradictory, since the latter concerns changing or manipulating the natural environment, while the former would tend to exclude or prevent it.