The effects of China's environmental protection policies on pasture quality and the activities of small-scale herders in Songpan County, Western Sichuan.

Since 2000, there has been an ambitious governmental effort to protect China's grassland resources through new, often controversial, policies and programs backed up by massive capital investments and subsidies. The policies are intended to protect pastoral ecological systems while allowing the pasture-based husbandry sector to continue to evolve in ways that assure acceptable revenues to affected families and regions. This article reports results of a case study conducted in Songpan County of western Sichuan during the fall of 2013 specifically focused on these issues and interactions. The mixed-method research combines remotely sensed MODIS vegetation indices (EVI), livestock counts by type, and grassland area estimates at the township scale from 2000-2012, with depth interviews with local herding families and husbandry officials to determine how the husbandry sector has changed in the past 12 years under post-2000 policy interventions. Results for Songpan indicate that pasture coverage has improved slightly as grazing livestock density per hectare declined, but herders and local officials report that some of the new laws and programs have important unanticipated negative impacts on pasture quality, pasture ecology, and economic returns from herding for some families.