Among the transhumant communities of the North, the rights to cultivated land were much the same, but the dominant position of livestock in community activities introduced certain other communal rights that included common rights to grazing land, the right-of-way to water and grazing land, the right to grass on agricultural land unless the occupier cut and stacked it, and the right to crop residues unless similarly treated. In the western savannas, private ownership of stands of hashab (gum arabic) trees could be registered, an exception to the usual government ownership of the forests, but dead wood for domestic fuel and the underlying grass were common property. Water, a matter of greatest importance to stock raisers, was open to all if free standing, but wells and the associated drinking troughs were private property and retained by the digger season after season. In Northern Sudan, especially in the western region where increasing population and animal numbers placed pressure on the land, violations of customary laws and conflicts between ethnic groups over rights to pasturage and water increased during the 1990s and early 2000s. These were major factors behind the warfare that began in Western Sudan in early 2003.