The Social and Environmental Impacts of Absolute Protection of Northern China Grassland Nature Reserve Core Areas

摘要

Introduction: Nature reserves of China are largely distributed in the western part of China. Often time, they are also what the local inhabitants depend on for their livelihood(Sheng Ji Pei 2002).It is an important measure to protect biodiversity by giving absolute protection to the nature reserve core areas, but the core areas in northern China's grassland are usually the local herders' grazing lands, so based on the case study of Saihanwula national nature reserve of Inner Mongolia, this paper investigates what kind of impacts the measure brought to the local herders' everyday life and to the whole environment by prohibiting the herders from utilizing the grazing lands after the area was included in the nature reserve.