Abstract
Recently, mountain regions have become targets for conservation, so the impact of mobile pastoralism on mountain environments needs to be studied comprehensively. This study assessed the distribution of the livestock load in rangeland by examining the vegetation, the migration schedule and routes of the herds, and the extent of their daily grazing. A field survey was conducted in a Tibetan village in Yunnan, China, for 15 months between 2000 and 2004.
The livestock herds migrated seasonally according to the vegetation patterns and air temperature with altitude; this dispersed the livestock over a wide expanse of rangeland. Additionally, new economic opportunities and population-control policies may have decreased the number of mobile livestock herds, and the characteristics of the mountain rangeland may have limited the scale of individual herds. Consequently, little rangeland was damaged excessively. Nevertheless, the rangeland was not grazed evenly; for example, rangeland located near arterial roads attracted many livestock herds.
A detailed analysis of the county livestock records suggested a biased distribution of the livestock load across altitude for the entire rangeland in Xianggelila County; alpine rangeland was grazed sparsely, while low-lying rangeland was grazed extensively.
Biased grazing patterns were noted in parts of the mountain rangeland, such as low-lying and easily accessible areas. These grazing patterns might have caused localized rangeland degradation. Consequently, the biased grazing pattern needs to be resolved.
Mobile pastoralism in mountain regions was analyzed based on the concept of “verticality” to elucidate the typical production form of the mountain regions. When considering effective conservation programs, it is important to determine both the vertical and horizontal migration patterns of livestock herds and assess the distribution of the livestock load in detail.
