Pastoralist Decision-Making on the Tibetan Plateau

Emily T. Yeh1& Leah H. Samberg2 & Gaerrang3 & Emily Volkmar1 & Richard B. Harris4

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017

Abstract Despite a growing body of research about rangelanddegradation and the effects of policies implemented to addressit on the Tibetan Plateau, little in-depth research has been con-ducted on how pastoralists make decisions. Based on qualita-tive research in Gouli Township, Qinghai province, China, weanalyze the context in which Tibetan herders make decisions,and their decisions about livestock and pastures. We refutethree fundamental assumptions upon which current policy ispremised: that pastoralists aim to increase livestock numberswithout limit; that, blindly following tradition, they do not ac-tively manage livestock and rangelands; and that they lackenvironmental knowledge. We demonstrate that pastoralistscarefully assess limits to livestock holdings based on land andlabor availability; that they increasingly manage their livestockand rangelands through contracting; and that herding knowl-edge is a form of embodied practical skill. We further discusspoints of convergence and contradiction between herders’ ob-servations and results of a vegetation analysis.

Keywords Tibet . Pastoralism . Rangeland condition .

Livestockmanagement . Environmental knowledge

[The government] should try hard to change these con-cepts in traditional pastoralism: judging wealth by live-stock numbers, perceiving rangeland as free resources,using [rangeland] without limit, and the unwillingnessto slaughter or sell.-Commit tee for Popula t ion, Resources , andEnvironment, Chinese People’s Political ConsultativeConference, 20081

Many Tibetan herdsmen believe that the innumer-able sheep and cattle crowding the range are bless-ings from Buddha, but many are now [because ofgovernment restrictions] realizing that less is more.– Xinhua News, 2013.2

Introduction

A growing body of literature addresses the causes of grasslanddegradation on the Tibetan Plateau and the effects of variousrangeland management policies that have been implementedin response. The dominant view of Chinese policy makers aswell as remote sensing scientists in the Chinese academyis that degradation is caused largely by irrational manage-ment and overgrazing beyond carrying capacity, and bythe burrowing and herbivory of plateau pikas (Ochotona

1 Research report on establishment of long-term rangeland ecological protec-tion compensation mechanism in the TAR (guanyu jianli Xizang caoyuanshengtai buchang changxiao jizhi de diaoyan baogao) in Proposals onSustainable Development 2007 (in Chinese), Forestry Publishing House,Beijing, 366–72, in Nyima (2014:186).2 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-08/31/c_132679346.htm

* Emily T. Yehemily.yeh@colorado.edu

1 University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA2 Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota, Saint

Paul, MN 55108, USA3 The Centre for Tibetan Studies of Sichuan University,

Chengdu, China4 Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Olympia, WA 98501,

USA

Hum EcolDOI 10.1007/s10745-017-9891-8

curzoniae) (Du et al. 2004; Du et al. 2012; Pan et al. 2015;Wang et al. 2013; Wei and Chen 2001). Policy responses,including the Rangeland Household Responsibility Systemand tuimu huancao (Bretire livestock, restore rangeland^),have been grounded in a tragedy of the commons model thatpresses for the privatization and division of pastoral use rightsto smaller scales of management – increasingly to the house-hold. However, studies have demonstrated negative social andenvironmental effects related to the reduction of flexibility andmobility, including more concentrated trampling and grazing,as well as greater susceptibility to livestock loss during snow-storms (Bauer 2005; Bauer and Nyima 2010; Cao et al. 2011a;Cao et al. 2011b; Cao et al. 2013; Gongbuzeren et al. 2015;Harris 2010; Li 2012; Yan et al. 2011; Yan andWu 2005; Yanet al. 2005; Yeh 2009; Yeh 2013; Yeh et al. 2014).

In addition to division of pasture use rights, other policy re-sponses have included mass pika poisoning campaigns, despitethe pika’s status as a keystone species for biodiversity (Smith andFoggin 1999), and regulations to limit household livestock hold-ings to government-established carrying capacities. Herders arelargely opposed to poisoning because of their Buddhist stance onthe mass taking of life, and because they note that pika numbersbounce back quickly from poisoning. Moreover, recent studieshave found that extermination campaigns negatively affect pred-ator abundance as well as hydrological functioning(Badingquiying et al. 2016; Wilson and Smith 2015).

Regulation of livestock numbers is similarly problematic inpractice. Nyima (2015) demonstrates that the purportedly scien-tific determination of carrying capacity on the Tibetan Plateau isnot only plagued by technical problems, but also often deter-mined more by political-economic incentives than ecologicalconsiderations. Moreover, in some areas the official carryingcapacity is at or belowwhat is considered the household povertylevel. However, to date, there are few places on the TibetanPlateau where these limits on household livestock numbers havebeen strictly enforced. Destocking has instead taken place mostdramatically in the Sanjiangyuan area of Qinghai province (aregion encompassing the sources of the Yangtze, Yellow andMekong Rivers) through Becological migration,^ a program thatmoves herders completely off the grasslands to settlements indistant towns, which had led to socio-cultural dislocation with-out attendant evidence of grassland improvement (Bauer 2015).

In critiquing the flawed assumptions of these various policies,Harris (2010:8) notes that Bmost Chinese biological research hasnot asked, much less answered, questions regarding human mo-tivations among the pastoralists using the rangelands of the[Tibetan plateau], but this has not kept many authors from sug-gesting simple reductions in livestock numbers or dramaticchanges in livestock production systems.^ Social science re-search, for the most part, has also not focused on understandingpastoralists’ decision-making about their pastures and livestock(but see Bessho (2015) on decisions to leave herding and moveto town). Addressing this lacuna, this paper draws on in-depth

interviews with Tibetan pastoralists to explore their practices andmotivations in relation to current policies. At their core, thesepolicies presume that transhumant pastoralism is an anachronismwhose practitioners must bemodernized in order to restore grass-land condition. More specifically, as demonstrated in the epi-graphs above, they are premised upon the assumptions thatTibetan pastoralists (1) aim to increase their livestock numberswithout limit; (2) act according to tradition and thus do not ac-tively manage or make sound decisions about their livestock andrangelands; and (3) are not knowledgeable about their environ-ments. Following a description of ourmethods and study site, thepaper demonstrates that these assumptions are untenable. In thefirst main section, on livestock numbers and management, weaddress the first two assumptions. The last section addressesherders’ environmental knowledge and its relationship to find-ings from ecological science.

Methods, Study Site, and Context

Our analysis is part of a larger interdisciplinary study conductedfrom 2009 to 2014 in Village Five of Gouli Township, DulanCounty, Qinghai Province, China (Fig. 1), home to 175 residentsin 37 households, most of whom are engaged primarily in pas-toralism. Village Five occupies relatively high elevation pastureswithin Gouli (between 4100 and 4900 m, with vegetation sparseabove 4700 m), and had been used as summer and transitional(spring/fall) pastures before collectives were dismantled in 1983.Pastoralists now use the lower areas as winter pastures, to whichthey move in mid-October and stay until mid-June, when theyleave for higher spring/fall and summer pastures. The implemen-tation of the Rangeland Household Responsibility System in1996 allocated specific winter pastures to each pastoralist house-hold on long-term leases (for details seeYeh andGaerrang 2011).

In addition to annual surveys of livestock numbers from 2009to 2012, we conducted semi-structured interviews and participantobservation with 17 households in 2009, 2010, and 2014. Theinterviews, most of which were conducted by native TibetanresearcherGaerrang, focused on village and household rangelandand livestock management history, household socioeconomicand demographic information, herders’ understandings of therelationship between livestock and rangeland condition, snow-storms, daily herding practices, livestock sales, identity, andhousehold aspirations and definitions of success. The broaderstudy also included an exclosure experiment (Harris et al.2015), and non-destructive annual vegetation sampling forground cover and species composition on 317 permanent plotsin eleven winter pastures from 2009 to 2012 (Harris et al. 2016).

Pastoralists, like all people, make everyday decisions withinspecific political-economic, environmental, and socio-culturalcontexts. In Gouli, Tibetan herders maneuver within China’sauthoritarian state capitalist institutions and forces, which haveproduced an increasingly marketized environment, as well as

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development projects that subsidize new houses for pastoralistsin town, aimed at enticing herders to urbanize and give up pas-toralism; compulsory education and school consolidation poli-cies; attempts (thus far unsuccessful) to organize herders intocooperatives; and rapid construction of transportation infrastruc-ture. In contrast to many areas of Qinghai, caterpillar fungus(Ophiocordyceps sinensis) is not found here and is thus not animportant source of income for Gouli households. Limits onhousehold herd size were announced in 2004, but have not beenstrictly enforced. As a way of maintaining flexibility in the faceof the quasi-privatization of pastures through the RangelandHousehold Responsibility System, Gouli pastoralists have, overthe last 15 years, developed an increasingly complex system ofsub-leasing their pastures, paying rental fees to graze their live-stock on others’ pastures, providing labor for herding, andcontracting livestock out to other herders. The increasing preva-lence of grassland leasing has been recently documented in otherTibetan areas as well (Li 2012; Levine 2015). Whether sucharrangements decrease (Li 2012) or increase (Yeh andGaerrang 2011; Levine 2015) inequality is dependent on theleasing arrangements developed in specific locations. However,the system in Gouli appears distinct insofar as pastoralists leasenot only land but also livestock.

Though herders in Gouli do not have a uniform view ontrends in grassland condition, there is widespread agreement that

livestock weights have decreased over time. Like Tibetans else-where on the eastern Tibetan Plateau (Byg and Salick 2009),herders in Gouli note significant changes in precipitation pat-terns, stating for example: BMany years ago, before the rain itwas foggy and damp so grasses grew quickly… Now in thesummer the rainfall is rare but sometimes there are sudden rain-falls and hail, which may destroy grasses and break plants.^

Culturally, an important trend since the early 2000s hasbeen the growing influence across the eastern Tibetan plateauof the slaughter renunciation movement, led by charismaticBuddhist teachers from the Larung Gar Buddhist Academy inSerthar (Seda), Sichuan province. As part of a Buddhist ethi-cal reform movement, Tibetan religious teachers have encour-aged herders to take vows not to sell livestock to slaughter-houses, in order to prevent the severe suffering engendered bythe ways the livestock are transported and slaughtered(Gaerrang 2011; Gaerrang 2015). This movement has hadlimited influence in Gouli, where herders have not taken suchoaths. However, some are familiar with the teachings and arereluctant to sell livestock directly to slaughterhouses, prefer-ring to sell livestock for non-slaughter purposes or, in somecases, to middlemen. Importantly, this is very much aBuddhist modernist movement, an articulation of how to beethical, modern, and Tibetan in the twenty-first century, ratherthan an unchanged tradition, as state discourse tends to

Fig. 1 Study site. Map by Galen Maclaurin

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represent Tibetan herders’ actions and ideas (Gaerrang 2011,2015; Gayley 2013, 2016; Kabzung and Yeh 2016).

The Simplistic View of Livestock as Wealth

Explanations about how pastoralists decide herd size, move-ment, and grazing strategies often fail to take seriously thecomplexity of their own goals and strategies (McCabe2004). Instead, herders around the world have long beenportrayed as having irrational cultural norms that give statusand prestige to owners of large herds (Doran et al. 1979;Herskovits 1926). The epigraphs that begin this paper aretypical of Chinese representations of Tibetan pastoralists asoverly conservative and single-minded in their accumulationof too many livestock, a Bbackward^ trait that must be over-come through development (Yundannima 2012).

Social and ecological evidence has shown these models tobe flawed. In northern Kenya, McPeak (2005a, b) found thatherd sizes are rational at both the household and collectivelevels. Household income increased with herd sizes, andwealth in livestock offered a higher rate of return than otheravailable forms of formal savings, even with periodic herdlosses taken into account. Degradation resulted from subopti-mal spatial distribution of herds rather than herd sizes.Similarly, McCabe’s (2004) study refutes the long-held notionthat herds are an end in and of themselves for pastoralists.Instead, among Kenya’s Turkana pastoralists, livestock herdsare primarily a means to form families, a process which itselfmust be understood in cultural context. Moreover, herders donot sell more because they do not receive fair rates of ex-change for livestock, marketing infrastructure is lacking, andthere are few opportunities to make investments with greaterrates of return (ibid). Furthermore, larger herd sizes have beenfound to be an efficient risk reduction strategy for nomadicpastoralism (Naess and Bardsen 2010; Roth 1996).

Based on research in Nagchu Prefecture, TibetAutonomous Region, Nyima (2014) refutes the Chinese statediscourse of livestock as a Bsymbol of wealth^ for Tibetanherders on three grounds. First, he argues that outsiders mayhave an inflated view of livestock numbers because they donot understand the number of years needed before livestockcan be used either for production or sale. Second, he arguesthat a larger number of livestock acts as a form of insuranceagainst the probability of a devastating loss of the herd as aresult of density-independent mortality from severe snow-storms (Nyima 2014; Yeh et al. 2014). Finally, he finds thathouseholds with larger herds have a higher standard of living,with greater access to health care, education, meat and milkfor consumption, and participation in religious practices suchas pilgrimage. In short he argues that the number of livestockthat herders keep is economically rational.

Multi-Faceted Decision-Making about Herd Size in Gouli

Nyima’s (2015) arguments are directly relevant to Gouli,where households with larger herds have noticeably higherstandards of living in the form of better housing and vehicles.Herders make decisions about livestock purchase and salesbased on their needs to pay for school tuition, medical ex-penses, religious expenses, transportation, subsidized (butnot free) housing from state development projects, and othereveryday expenses in an increasingly monetized economy. Indoing so, they weigh options (and labor opportunity costs) toengage in other forms of work, such as wage labor and pettysales, against the income that can be earned from animal prod-ucts. These decisions are also conditioned by the extent towhich they have been influenced by the slaughter renunciationcampaign, and their desire (or lack thereof) to maintain a pas-toralist identity by retaining a tie to the land.

Beyond the parameters of Nyima’s (2015) critique, we con-tribute here another argument against the assumption thatherders maximize their livestock herds without limit: far fromfocusing exclusively on increasing livestock numbers, pasto-ralists in Gouli engage in complex assessments of land avail-ability and quality as well as considering labor availabilitywhen making decisions about herd sizes. Because sheep mustbe followed more closely than yaks, households with lessavailable labor power tend to keep fewer sheep. AsPastoralist LG explained, BI take labor into account whendeciding whether to increase or decrease [my livestock num-bers]… If there are not enough people to work then pastoral-ists will only herd yaks. If labor is available, they will herdboth yaks and sheep. Now, my grandson only herds yaks andmy son-in-law herds the sheep.^Another herder, Pastoralist L,explained, Bduring the winter, I divide the weaker sheep andherd them separately,^ a strategy that requires either havingmultiple laborers within the household or hiring outside labor.

Pastoralists also consider weather and grassland conditionswhen assessing the number of each type of livestock that theirpastures are capable of supporting. This in turn informs theirdecisions to sell or trade livestock, sublease additional land, orcontract out part of their herds to others. Pastoralist DT ex-plained, BI plan according to the weather. If it rains, I will planto increase my number of livestock. If the weather isn’t goodand I increase the livestock number, that won’t help.^Similarly, herder RC noted, BIf the weather is good and thereis rain, I will buy more livestock. If it is not, I will selllivestock.^ Pastoralist LG explained, BI haven’t tried to in-crease or decrease my livestock numbers [in the last fewyears]. I know how many [sheep and yaks] I can herd basedon the grassland condition and not more than that. Each year isdifferent. I consider if there is enough grass each year. If thereisn’t enough, I will sell some livestock and sheep becausethere isn’t enough space available on the grassland...Even ifthe condition is better than previously, I would not make a

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rushed decision. I would wait until there has been at least onemonth of good weather^ before considering increasing herdsize through purchase. These statements about the importanceof temperature and precipitation for vegetation dynamics aresupported by a number of studies of the Tibetan Plateau thatdemonstrate both temperature and precipitation are important,often interacting, drivers of vegetation dynamics (Berdanierand Klein 2011; Chu et al. 2007; Sun et al. 2013; Zhang et al.2010), though our data in Gouli did not find spring/summerprecipitation to be an important predictor of annual biomass(Harris et al. 2016).

Active Management through Contracting

Within the broad policy context of use rights privatiza-tion and division of rangeland into smaller parcels,Gouli herders try to match livestock numbers to pastureaccess through contracting arrangements that are multi-ple and fluid, often changing from year to year for eachhousehold. Most contracts are signed annually, thoughsome have terms as long as five years. Several Gouliherders act as middlemen, brokering complicated, multi-party arrangements. Most contracting is of sheep ratherthan yaks, because yak herds do not grow as quicklyand yaks do not need to be watched as closely assheep. It is common for households to graze their yakson (common) summer or fall pasture during some or allparts of the winter, saving their winter pasture, which islower and warmer, for sheep.

Most herding households in Gouli take part incontracting of livestock and land. In general, lesswealthy households prefer to take in other households’livestock on contract, as the butter and cheese producedcan be consumed or sold, and the household can alsoincrease their own herd size. Most commonly, they re-turn to the owner 30–35 lambs per 100 adult sheeptaken in, while keeping the rest of the lambs, or alter-natively return the original flock along with the mone-tary equivalent of 30–35 lambs, keeping the entire flockof baby sheep born in a year.

Conversely, those who are wealthier, those who havemore livestock than they feel their land or labor cansupport – and those who make a living in town assalaried employees or petty entrepreneurs or who mustmove to town for other reasons (such as caring forfamily members in the hospital) – contract their live-stock to other households. These contracts usually stip-ulate that they will receive their original flock back atthe end of the year, along with 30–35 lambs or theirmonetary equivalent. They also require that those whotake in livestock must compensate owners for any live-stock loss, including livestock deaths from heavy snow.Thus, these arrangements also serve as a risk mitigation

strategy for wealthier herders, who essentially offloadthat risk to those with fewer assets (Yeh and Gaerrang2011).

Households endowed with adequate land and labor poweroften decide to herd other households’ livestock along withtheir own, on their own pasture. If they wish to increase theirown herd size, they choose the option of keeping 30–35 lambsper 100 sheep (and bearing the risk of livestock loss).Alternatively, they may choose monetary compensation fortheir labor. Conversely, they may mitigate risk by contractingpart of their pasture to other herders to use in exchange forcash payment. Finally, those who have a reputation within thevillage of being particularly skillful herders can generally le-verage more advantageous arrangements.

Successful Use of Contracts

Here we present two examples of successful pastoralists whohave increasingly turned to contracts and rentals to managethe mismatch between their herd sizes and the amount andquality of pasture to which they have use rights. These casesfurther demonstrate that herders do not simply increase theirlivestock numbers without regard to limits.

Pastoralist T

In 2009, Pastoralist T’s household had the highest per capitanumber of livestock among herders in Village Five. Likemany others in the village, he lost more than 100 sheep inthe snowstorm of 1997–1998. In 2001, he purchased 100sheep to increase his herd size to 200. By then he had begunto contract out some of his sheep to other herders, who kept65–70% of the new lambs born each year, returning the orig-inal flock plus 30–35% of the new lambs to Pastoralist T. By2005, his sheep flock had reached 500, including 100 lambs.During the winter, Pastoralist T herded them for two monthson his own winter pasture and then for another four months onpasture subleased from another herder. He also sold 80 sheepthat year, noting that he felt there were too many for his pas-ture to support. Like most other Gouli herders, Pastoralist Tgrazed his yaks primarily on autumn and summer pastureseven during the winter.

From 2005 to 2009 he contracted 300 sheep to otherherders to graze on the other herders’ pastures. He used hisown pasture for his yaks, as well as the yaks of other herders.For example, in the winter of 2008–2009, Pastoralist L herded70 of his own yaks and all 150 of Pastoralist T’s yaks onPastoralist T’s winter pasture from October throughFebruary, and then on common summer pasture in Marchand April. That year, severe snow caused 20 of PastoralistT’s yaks to die of malnutrition and another ten were killedby wolves. In 2009–2010, Pastoralist T contracted 100 of his140 yaks to Pastoralist PG to graze on Pastoralist T’s land.

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Pastoralist T also paid Pastoralist L 8000 RMB3 to graze hisremaining 40 yaks on Pastoralist L’s land for six months ofthat year.

In the winter of 2010–2011, Pastoralist T subleased pastureuse rights from another herder in the village for three monthsin order to rest his own pasture. When we interviewed himabout the size of his pasture, he pointedly said that his deci-sions have to do with the quality, rather than the area, of hisrangeland. Pastoralist T was particularly attentive to the rela-tionship between livestock trampling and the quality of hisgrassland, stating that he did not sublease his pasture to otherherders because they might overstock it, leaving him withdamaged pasture. Like others, he stated that weather, specifi-cally precipitation, was an important factor in his annual as-sessments about how to modify his herd size. Through 2014,he had continued to contract his sheep out to other herderswhile maintaining 200 yaks. In 2014, he stated that he plannedto reduce his number of livestock because, Bnow there are toomany animals…If livestock number increases, then futuregrassland conditions will be poor. More livestock damagesthe grassland through their trampling on the grassland.^

Pastoralist H

Pastoralist H, a former village Communist Party Secretary, isrespected in Village Five as a thoughtful and capable man andconsidered a skilled herder. He has six children: a monk, atrader living in neighboring Golog County, two high schoolgraduates now working in salaried positions, and two herdersliving at home. His sheep numbers have increased slowly andsteadily over time; once he assessed that his allocated land hadalready reached the maximum number of livestock it couldsupport, his dominant strategy has been to contract his live-stock to others. Compared to Pastoralist T, Pastoralist H wasemphatic about the role of weather variables in determininggrassland condition, going so far as to say, BGrassland condi-tion does not depend on herding. It depends on the weather.^This observation about the significance of climate factors overbiological ones in affecting vegetation condition does not,however, mean that he pays no attention to how many live-stock he puts on the grasslands. Indeed, Pastoralist H is knownfor diligently and closely following his livestock, carefullymanaging where they graze.

The complexity of his herding strategies also revealsPastoralist H’s considerations of livestock number and grass-land condition. In 2009, he subleased the land of a monk in thevillage for a five-year period, for 50,000 RMB. During thewinter, he herded 400 of his sheep on his own winter pastures,which were divided at the time of rangeland allocation intofive different parcels, as well as that of a relative. He alsocontracted out his remaining 250 sheep to three other herders,

each of whom grazed the sheep on their own land in return fortaking 35% of the new lambs born that year. The followingyear, his herd reached its maximum size of 800 sheep and 170yaks. That year, he contracted sheep to five households (20 toone household, and 50 each to four households) andcontracted 140 lambs to a sixth household. He himself raisedthe remaining 440 sheep on his and his relative’s combinedpastures. That year his family members also herded their 170yaks on fall and summer pasture during most of the winter.Deciding that there were too many livestock for his land, hesold 90 sheep and continued to reduce his herd size the fol-lowing year.

Herders’ Environmental Knowledge

Having addressed two policy assumptions about livestocknumbers and pastoralists’ active management, we now turnto the third assumption, about knowledge. That herding is apractice and profession requiring skill and careful observationis not acknowledged in state policies or discourses, whichrepresent pastoralists as having, until recent state intervention,Bwandered around^ in search of grass and water, implying arandom and unskilled practice. However, we find that Tibetanpastoralists clearly have a great deal of environmentalknowledge. This knowledge is what Ingold and Kurttila(2000) call BLTK^ or Btraditional knowledge as generated inthe practice of locality,^ as opposed to BMTK^ or Btraditionalknowledge as generated enframed in the discourse ofmodernity.^ The latter model conceives of knowledge as asubstance, a set of discrete items that is Bpassed down^ inorder to be retrieved and applied, whereas the former under-stands knowledge to emerge through embodied practice. Aspractice, knowledge Bundergoes continual generation and re-generation within the contexts of people’s practical engage-ment with significant components of the environment^(Ingold and Kurttila 2000:192). Ingold and Kurttila furtherargue that LTK can be conceptualized as skill, understood asBa property of the whole human organism-person, havingemerged through the history of his or her involvement in anenvironment;^ it is thus Brefractory to codification in the pro-grammatic form of rules and representations^ (193). In short,it is that which cannot be adequately described in the two-dimensional form of a textual narrative or a set of quantitativemetrics. That distilling such embodied skill into written textu-al, numeric, or symbolic form is difficult and awkward doesnot mean that herders do not have sophisticated practicalknowledge about their land and livestock. This can be seenin how herders describe which livestock they graze at whattimes in what locations. For example, Pastoralist L explained:

I have both sunny and shadow sides in my winter pas-ture. When it is snowing, I use the sunny side of the3 The exchange rate is roughly 6.5 RMB = 1 USD.

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pasture [which he has fenced], which is a little warmerthan other parts. When the snow is not heavy, I can useboth sunny and shadow parts.When it is sunny, I use theparts of the pasture that have less grass, such as the highrocky mountain area and the shadow side where thegrass is shorter. This way, I can save the best parts ofthe pasture for harsh days when it is snowing or verycold. During cold days, I herd livestock in the relativelywarm parts of the winter pasture, but not the most pro-ductive parts, which I save for days when it is snowing.On good days, I herd livestock in places where they canaccess just enough grass, not the best….

Herding yaks is easier than herding sheep. But thesedays, there are very few places where one can free yaksto graze wherever they want. Herders have to go withthe yaks to graze them strategically. A herder has to seewhich parts of winter pasture they should graze first, andwhich parts later, when it is cold. If you let your yaks gofreely to winter pasture and let’s say they’re not killed bywolves, they will eat the best parts of the pasture andthen there won’t be any grass left during the harsh[snowy] days. A good herder will not allow this tohappen.

Pastoralist DT explains his strategies for herding differenttypes of livestock as follows:

On the winter pasture, there are sunny and shadow parts,but there is not enough for the livestock because partsare bare soil with no grasses left. I have flat grasslandthat I use in the winter for livestock that are old andweak, and also sheep and yaks that already have new-born lambs and baby yaks. When it is windy and chilly,we herd on the sunny part of the land and the valley…Sometimes it is necessary to herd [different kinds oflivestock] separately. At other times, it is necessary toherd them together when there is only one part of thegrassland that can be grazed. If there is snow, then thereshould be more grass on the shadow side of the winterpasture that is covered with snow until February. If thereisn’t much snow, then the sunny side should be better. Inyears when there isn’t much snow, we do not allow thelivestock to eat grass on the sunny side [because wesave it for later]. When we want to herd the live-stock on the higher parts of the pasture, we have tobe very careful not to trample the grass when wedrive the herd to the destination. We drive themthrough a very small valley where there is a pathso that the grass will not be affected by trampling.

Our vegetation study corroborates the fact that herders di-rect their attention to pastures and livestock. Harris et al.(2016) found that overall, pastoralists stocked their pasturein response to the relative abundance of palatable forage,and stocked more lightly where indicators of erosion werehigher. Though Gouli herders did not verbally articulate theirstrategies in relation to palatable vs. unpalatable species, theirpractical actions consisted of avoiding putting more sheep onpastures that had high biomass but significant weedy species.That is, their embodied skills included a differentiation be-tween palatable and unpalatable species, even when, in inter-views, they did not articulate these distinctions (see resultsfrom Harris et al. 2016).

Of course, like other groups of people, individual Gouliherders vary in their level of knowledge and skill in herding.Some are more thoughtful, meticulous, diligent, and observantin their management and embodied skill than others. By dem-onstrating that herders are knowledgeable about their environ-ments through continual engagement with place, and do notjust Bwander^ aimlessly in search of water and grass, ourintention is not to paper over differences in the degree towhich this is the case. After accounting for both annual andsite specific differences in forage quality and quantity, Harriset al. (2016: Table 2) found that pastures displayed heteroge-neity in their responses to pastoralist decision-making, andthat pastoralists evidently differed in their ability to movepastures toward palatable, away from unpalatable, and awayfrom eroded conditions.

The BScent^ of the Soil

In discussing qualities of different pastures, herders frequentlydeploy the concept of the soil’s Bscent^ (sa dri). For example,Pastoralist W stated, Bthe best pasture has the qualities ofdense grass, soil that has a good scent, and a combination ofsunny and shadowy slopes, wetlands, and flat areas.^ Goulipastoralists state that because their soil has a particularly goodscent, their livestock are relatively plentiful, large, and healthycompared to those in other pastoral areas on the TibetanPlateau, even though grass cover is sparser. As one put it,BEven though there is less grass than other places, the live-stock here can better survive. Around Qinghai Lake, the grassis much denser, but their livestock are not as good as ours. It’ssaid this is due to the different scent of the soil.^ Anotherexplained, Bin a place with abundant grass but without goodsoil scent, the livestock will starve in the fall even if there isgrass to eat.^ Several herders attributed this to a greater saltcontent in the soil. Importantly, herders emphasize that grass isnot everything; tall grass growing on soil with poor sa driwillresult in poor livestock, whereas good sa dri will cause live-stock to be fat and healthy even if the land looks degraded tooutsiders because of sparse grass. This insight speaks to fre-quent clashes between outsiders’ landscape aesthetics and

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local understandings of vegetation history, in pastoral areasand beyond (Williams 2002; Yundannima 2012).

Despite their conviction that Gouli had relatively good soil,no herders stated that its scent was improving over time.Instead, in explaining why livestock weights have decreased,Pastoralist K stated that it was the scent of the soil that hasdeteriorated over time. A number asserted that mining and thedigging of medicinal herbs undermines the good Bscent^ ofthe soil. This concept of the soil’s scent is found in otherTibetan pastoral areas as well, and is related to the conceptof the soil’s Bnutrition^ or Bessence^ (sa bcud). The latter iswidely deployed to explain why grassland condition suffers asa result of mining (see Yeh 2014). Sa bcud is understood as aregional condition, whereas sa dri is a more localized condi-tion that can vary from kilometer to kilometer. Thus, thoughthere is limited mining in Gouli itself, confined to the land ofone pastoralist-businessman who willingly rented out his landfor mineral extraction, herders asserted that mining locally andmore broadly on the plateau affected both the scent and theessence of the soil and thus rangeland conditions and livestockweight.

Grazing, Climate and Grassland Condition

As is the case with much ecological research on the Tibetanplateau and elsewhere, Gouli herders’ analyses of vegetationconditions sometimes converge with and sometimes conflictwith those of ecological science (Klein et al. 2014;Nightingale 2016). The majority of Gouli herders weinterviewed stated that grassland conditions at the present timeare worse than in the past, a general trend that is reinforced bytheir observations of declining livestock weights, and that issupported by Harris et al.’s (2016) vegetation study, whichfound declines in most rangeland indicators over the 2009–2012 study period, even accounting for annual weather fluctu-ations. However, there were some dissenting voices. For ex-ample, Pastoralist RC stated in 2014 that though conditionsworsened for a number of years after the division of winterpastures, Bsince 2005, grassland condition has been improv-ing. The grass is taller and thicker. There is more grass coverand less bare ground.^ Herder L also stated that the yearsimmediately following winter pasture allocation were charac-terized by more bare ground, but that this changed after 2007–2008. He attributed his observations of less bare ground andhigher grasses to his own skillful management of the pastures.

Gouli herders also have complicated and at times self-contradictory understandings of the extent to which grazingdensity - as opposed to weather conditions - affects vegetation.As discussed above, herders emphasize the importance ofhighly variable weather conditions as a key driver of annualvariation in vegetation growth. For example herder LG states,BWhen there is more rain, vegetation grows better, particularlythose with flowers, which are good for yaks. If there is more

grass mixed with flowering plants yaks will become moreproductive in milk, which is an important indicator that yakshave good nutrition.^

Some herders’ statements about weather events appear torepresent a radically non-equilibrium view of the ecosystem,in which weather events make livestock numbers inconse-quential for grassland dynamics. These herders explain thattheir pastures have limits in terms of how many livestock theycan support, but that the consequences of exceeding theselimits would be the death of livestock, rather than grassgrowth the following year (as long as precipitation is plenti-ful). Several claimed that Bin places where grass grows well, itwill continue to grow regardless of livestock number; inplaces where livestock do not grow well, then the grass doesnot grow even where no livestock are put on the land,^ aproposition contradicted by our vegetation study (Harriset al. 2016).

However, these assessments are tempered and somewhatcontradicted by other statements, sometimes by the sameherders, that do suggest the importance of livestock density,usually couched in terms of a problem of trampling rather thangrazing per se. Several stated that the soil might be Bkilled^ bythe trampling action of too many livestock. Others suggestthat both trampling and grazing affect grassland condition, aproposition supported by Harris et al.’s (2016) study.Pastoralist GW asserts, Bif you herded your livestock in away that does not allow for some grasses to be leftover, thiswill affect next year’s grass growth.^ Pastoralist GK agreedthat, Bif you herd fewer livestock on the pasture, this is goodfor the grassland condition.^ More importantly, even thosewho stated that livestock numbers made no difference forgrassland condition had clear notions of how many livestockare appropriate for their pastures, and engaged in contractingof land and livestock to maintain these levels, with varyingdegrees of success. That is, though they appeared to articulatea radically non-equilibrium view of the ecosystem, their em-bodied practices were more consistent with a much more nu-anced view (and one more in keeping with current ecologicalunderstandings) in which biotic and density-dependent factorsof herbivory and trampling are consequential at many times,while being made irrelevant at other points in time.

These disparate views can be interpreted together to sug-gest that short-termweather variations may outweigh stockingrate in determining annual variation in range condition, butmanagement of grazing density and timing also matter, partic-ularly over longer periods. Our vegetation study found evi-dence that, normalizing for the effect of annual weather vari-ations, some ecological parameters (e.g., proportion of baresoil, erosion index, vegetation cover and grass herbage mass)responded to livestock density over the 2009–2012 study pe-riod. Moreover, Harris et al.’s (2015) exclosure experimentsuggested that the predominant forage species, Stipapurpurea, is adapted to moderate levels of herbivory and

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competes with itself in the absence of herbivory, so that graz-ing exclusion did not have strong effects on annual biomassproduction, though it did improve bare soil and other erosionindicators.

Finally, it should be noted that interpreting apparent dis-crepancies between herders’ articulated environmental knowl-edge and the results of ecological studies of vegetation iscomplicated not only by the gap that can be produced in thetranslation from LTK to MTK, but also by different timescales of observation. Our vegetation data, collected annuallybetween the growing seasons of 2009 through 2012, cannotaccount, for example, for Herder L’s recollection that range-land conditions worsened in 1998–1999 because of a lack ofrain and a sudden increase in pika numbers, or pastoralist DT’sstatement that there is more bare ground on his pasture nowthan in the past decade, but that 30 years ago there was morebare ground than today. These issues should be further ex-plored with longer scientific data sets along with a recognitionof the integrative character of local knowledge (Berkes andBerkes 2009; Klein et al. 2014).

Conclusion

Gouli herders are in agreement about their observations ofdecreased livestock weights over time. They interpret theseobservations through a set of causal explanations that partiallyoverlap with and partially diverge from ecological understand-ings of rangeland degradation. Many point as an ultimatecause to their understanding that the contemporary world isin the midst of an Bage of degeneration^ or BDharma-endingage,^ a historical period following the life of ShakyamuniBuddha when sentient beings become greedy and filled withhatred, the dharma cannot be transmitted properly, and there isa state of general world decline. At least one herder in Goulialso attributed what he observed as increased grass cover onhis pasture over the past six years to efficacious religiousactivities, including inviting monks to chant prayers over bar-ley grains he provided as an offering. Simultaneously, herdersalso attribute the rangeland conditions they observe to theirown management practices, to mining and quarrying bothlocally and regionally, to an overabundance of pikas, and tothe household division of winter pasture and its attendant con-centration of grazing and trampling.

While neither ecologists nor officials of an atheist state arelikely to find much use for Buddhist explanations of the ulti-mate causes of grassland degradation, we have suggested herethat there is certainly value for them in herders’ environmentalobservations and the proximate theories of degradation thatthey deduce from them. These are not blindly inherited fromthe timeless past, but rather constitute knowledge that is con-tinually produced through embodied practice. Neither theirobservations nor our vegetation studies (Harris et al. 2015,

2016) can definitively determine whether and to what extentlag effects of overgrazing, household division of pasture anddecreased mobility, current overstocking by some pastoralistsor in some years, and climate change, alone and in combina-tion, are leading to changes in grassland characteristics.However, the points of convergence and divergence betweendifferent forms and sources of knowledge highlighted by thisstudy should be a particularly productive entry point for fur-ther research (Gearheard et al. 2010; Klein et al. 2014;Nightingale 2016; Popke 2016; Yeh 2016).

More broadly, we have demonstrated that Tibetan pastoral-ists assess limits to livestock holdings based on land and laboravailability, and make active decisions about grazing practicesbased on their observations of vegetation, the weather, andtheir livestock, and in the context of multi-scalar and contem-porary political-economic and cultural-political forces. Withina policy context that pushes privatization, they have increas-ingly turned to contracting of livestock and rangelands tomaintain flexibility in management. Like all people, pastoral-ists differ in their levels of skill and knowledge, but our studysuggests that they do have significant knowledge in the formof embodied, practical skill in stocking and managing theirpastures. Policy makers who wish to achieve policy outcomesthat benefit both herders and grasslands would do well toconsider how to engage in dialogue with herders’ existingknowledge, management practices, cultural context, and goalsrather than continue to act as if these do not exist.

Acknowledgements We thank Pemabum for field assistance and themany herders in Gouli who patiently answered our questions over anumber of years.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Funding This study was funded by the US National ScienceFoundation, Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human SystemsProgram, Award 0815441.

Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflictof interest.

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