Rangelands cover approximately 70-80% of Afghanistan's land area and provide critical provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural ecosystem services that sustain rural livelihoods and biodiversity. Although ecological assessments quantify these ecosystem functions, local herders' perceptions strongly influence grazing decisions, shape community engagement, and ultimately affect the success of resiliencebuilding interventions. Consequently, understanding local perceptions is essential for designing interventions that align socio-cultural values with ecological realities. This study surveyed 200 households in Band-e-Amir National Park and the Shah-e-Foladi protected rangeland to document perceived ecosystem services and to identify drivers of perceived vulnerability to rangeland degradation. Respondents reported moderate-to-high awareness of provisioning services (fodder, fuelwood, and fiber) and of key regulating services (soil stabilization and water retention), but relatively limited recognition of supporting and cultural services. Overgrazing, shrub collection, and expansion of dryland farming emerged as the primary perceived threats to rangeland resilience. Multivariate regression analysis indicated that greater occupational dependency on rangeland resources and tenure insecurity were associated with higher perceived vulnerability, whereas higher household income was associated with lower perceived vulnerability. Notably, higher levels of social trust were also associated with increased perceived vulnerability, and greater awareness of ecosystem services heightened sensitivity to degradation risks. Taken together, these findings imply that integrated interventions-such as tenure reforms, livelihood diversification, communitybased governance, and participatory education-tailored to local patterns of occupational dependence, tenure insecurity, economic capacity, social trust, and service awareness are likely to strengthen stewardship, reinforce ecosystem functions, and improve the resilience of Afghanistan's rangelands. (c) 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of The Society for Range Management. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )