Pasturing gives the main income and provides normal scale of living to local population of Lepsy village. Growth of the livestock quantity, active pasturing together with irrational use of pastures have lead to pasture degradation on area of about 5-11 thousands ha around the village.

One of the ways to restore degraded pastures is grazing optimization and interplanting of local wild growing forage plants. Change in pasture management will allow localizing degradation and restoration on pastures and increase its potential productivity.

Project aim:
Demonstration of possibilities of the pastures degradation decrease through intercropping of wild growing wheat grass on degraded area and part of livestock transfer on distant pastures.

Project tasks:
1) Degraded pastures biodiversity rehabilitation and degradation localization on the territory of 50 hectares, by means of wheat grass intercropping without mechanical tilling;
2) Decreasing the load on the pastures round the settlement through transferring cattle (about 150 heads of the horned cattle) to the remote pasture lands, and use of those territories in the pastures rotation system.

Project results:
As a main result we can consider developing of the new technology of degraded lands and pastures restoration on sandy-loam soils by grounding weeds of wild crested-wheat grass from local flora and demonstration of possibilities on successful pastures degradation decreasing on the lands around the villages.

In addition, there were several more expected results for local population and also good results in the field of environment restoration: the load on pastures around the settlement was decreased on about 150 standard items of cattle, new lands (4000 ha) were included in pastures area, so that seasonal pastures rotation system was successfully implemented. Furthermore, in the end of the pasturing period, live weights of the one item of the one young animal (cattle under two years old) increased up to 35-40 kg and small cattle ? up to 7-9 kg.

All this allowed local population first - stabilize and second ? improve situation with lands degradation (which was decreased) and make a good base for settlement further development in harmony with environment.