Study On The Constraints For Grassland Management In Arid And Semi-arid Pastoral Regions Of Middle-eastern Gansu

Grassland management has caused public attention recently, especially after a seriesof environmental problems concerning grassland. The problem of grassland managementand improvement is no longer just the regional problem in pastoral areas, but also relatedto the whole nation, even the whole world. Governments and related departments keepmaking efforts to reform and adjust the grassland management policy from the pasturecontract system to intensive animal husbandry and pasture condominium, etc. This appliedresearch, according to the actual situation in arid and semi-arid pastoral region of Gansu,is aimed to provide advices to the local governmental grassland policy makers throughreviewing the current grassland management policy and investigating the efficiency ofcurrent policy.Grassland management is not only an ecological issue, but even a social andeconomic concern, especially in the pastoral areas. In consideration of the special regionalsituation, the social and economic development, ecological problem and industrialstructure should be covered. Therefore, the methodology used in this study will be acombination involving economics, management, ethnology and anthropology of socialscience and pratacultural science, animal husbandry and ecology of natural science.This study was conducted in the view of microcosmic, medium and macroscopiclevels.Macroscopic level: summarize and review the grassland management policies andmeasures in foreign countries that have developed grassland and animal husbandry, andthe grassland management policy and its efficiency in China.Medium level: investigate the grassland utilization, livestock production andgrassland management history at village level and analyze the relationship betweenlivestock population, stocking rate and rainfall and grassland management policy, explorethe effect of grassland management policies at regional scale.Microcosmic level: select eight animal husbandry villages in pasturing area andfarming-pastoral area in middle-western Gansu Province to survey the animal productionand the realization of herders to the grassland management policy, impact of policy onlivelihood of herders, and the factors affecting policy were analyzed and ranked. Theresult indicated that the realization of herders to the policy depended on the educated level,income and whether family members go out to work and so on. Aimed to some disputable issues regarding grassland policy making andimplementation, the deeply analysis was made in terms of carrying capacity establishmentand elasticity, advantages and disadvantages of "grassland-livestock contract" forgrassland animal husbandry, nomadism or settle down, the reason of grassland degradation(man-made faults or natural factors).The strategies and advices were provided based on above mentioned research work asfollows:1) Improving the theory system in order to make scientific and feasible grasslandpolicy.2) Clarifying the grassland tenure to strengthen the grassland management.3)Strengthening the capacity construction through participatory methodology.4) Properlyallocate the regional animal husbandry to reduce the grassland pressure.5) Establishingand improving the policy for grassland general subsidies to promote the economicdevelopment in pastoral areas.6) Enhancing the construction of grassland monitoringsystem and establishing mechanisms for long-term work.7) Supporting the developmentof specialized cooperative organization for improving the grassland utilization.8)Improving the socialization service system and enhancing the development capability inpastoral areas.