Study On The Herdsmens' Behavior And Regulated Countermeasures On Grassland Degradation

The Northwestern Sichuan Province pastoral area is one of the most important pastoral areas in Sichuan Province and in China. However, the grassland had become degradating obviously in recent 20 years, which not only obstructed the development of the animal husbandry and economy, restricted the increase of herdsmens' income and their standard of living, threatened the ecosystem safety in the downstream region, also would influence the society stablity in the race region. The grassland is directly used by herdsmen, who's behaviors and attitudes are the micro-foundation in grassland sustainable use. To really solve the grassland degradation from the source of problems, it should be started from the microcosmic subject-herdsmens' behaviors and characteristics.Based on the interview of government and the survey of herdsmen in Hong-yuan County and Ruo er-gai County of northwestern Sichuan province, by analysis on survey data, this paper shows the main factors of grassland degradation and puts forward correlation suggestions. The main conclusions are drawn as follows:(1) Herdsmen pursue the livestock amount. Seriously overloaded makes the grassland being lack of rest to raise, occupied superiorly by the inferior herding grass, miscellaneous and poisonous, and deteriorated. Herdsmen mine the natural medicine material immoderately, which directly destructed the sward. Herdsmen collect cow muck as the consume energy in great quantities, stopping the nourishment material of the soil from circulating. The grassland lacked fatty but no one add for the fertilizer. Investment in grassland is insufficient, demanding energy excessively from the lawn with less inputting. If this situation persists, the grassland cannot but degenerate.(2) The herdsmen need to exist and develop for theirselves, their behaviors are influenced and restricted by their demands. The limited grassland resources can't satisfy herdsmen's basic needing, while the rigid increment of expending demanding force herdsmen to search a path to earn more money. But the economic structure in pastoral area is singleness, herdsmen only depend on stock raising. Lacking of income source, the extension grazing scale is the most direct way to accept much more income. In the meantime, the herdsmen as "the reasonableness economic person", on account of the unsteadily herdsmens' economy expects, under the lower education and indigent professional technique, who pursue an amount type income with short-term, which will become an inevitable choice.(3) The natural lawn resources have both private economy and ecosystem environment attributes, and there is an antinomy between economy development and ecosystem protective. The present system for no clear relationship between ownership and grassland, a part of the grassland resources is still "a public resources whoever can get into freely ", which makes the positive externality in using of natural grassland resources still exist. So the result of that the final outcome of the resources will exhauste can't be avoided.(4) All the behaviors of herdsmen are rational behaviors coming with the actual demand. To change their inappropriate use, it is necessary to proceed from the needs of herdsmen, in line with their actual economic and living conditions. Accordingly, we should set up a macroeconomic social policy system based on understanding and meeting the herdsmens' basic needs, to guide herdsmen to sustainable use of grassland by four countermearues: developing modern animal husbandry and ecological alternative industry; controling the herdsmen's behavior; promoting education in pastoral areas of science and technology, enhacing herdsmen's ecological protection awareness; strengthening grassland deterioration of the ecological environment control and ecological restoration. Thus fundamentally maximum of grassland resources protection would be made.