Tibetan and Himalayan Library - THL

Description: Creator's Description: The western Tibetan Plateau is currently undergoing the initiation of substantial changes in rangeland management associated with China’s drive to develop the western provinces and new land tenure arrangements for pastoralists under the “household responsibility system.” However, this same region of high plateau, encompassing parts of western Qinghai, western Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and the far south of Xinjiang Autonomous Region, has also seen the recent creation of a number of large nature reserves, covering almost 70 percent of the high northern Tibetan Plateau, called the Byang thang region. Biodiversity conservation here is focused on large mammal species such as the Tibetan antelope, wild yak and other herbivores, some of which have seen dramatic reductions in their populations over the past century. Large-scale efforts have been initiated to deter hunting, but the effects of this activity on livelihoods of some of the northernmost pastoralist communities are little-noticed or appreciated. More significant in the long term, however, is that although Tibet’s nomadic herders have coexisted with the various wild species for centuries, current development efforts on the plateau to modernize livestock husbandry will lessen the potential for maintenance of current wild populations, and their unique attributes such as the large-scale migratory behavior of some of these wild species. We focus on an area with pastoralists and abundant wildlife at the northern limit of human habitation in the western Byang thang Nature Reserve, where the same development interventions as on the rest of the plateau appear to be in conflict with conservation goals. Although some accommodations between human and wildlife interests are possible, as in other pastoral regions of the world, the mixing of wild and domestic large herbivores can be very problematic, and in such instances the maintenance of modern versions of traditional management regimes is often best. How development and nature reserve conservation efforts interact to affect both ecosystem attributes and local livelihoods will constitute formative policy issues in the Byang thang for the foreseeable future.

Means of availability: Also available as a PDF at http://texts.thlib.org/static/reprints/jiats/04/foxJIATS_04_2008.pdf