{"title":"Herders’ Preferences for Maintaining Yak Herding in the Eastern Himalayas","authors":"Rajesh Kumar Rai , Srijana Joshi , Tashi Dorji , Basant Pant","doi":"10.1016/j.rama.2024.01.009","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Yak herding, a market-based tradition, is vanishing gradually. The changing environment such as climate change, policy context, and socioeconomic change is not in favor of yak herding. Using a choice experiment survey approach, this study determines the yak herders’ preferences to improve yak herding in Kanchenjunga Landscape, Nepal. The results of the choice response analysis indicate that yak herders prefer to improve yak herding by improving rangeland management, infrastructure, and health and safety services. Herders have a high preference for yak insurance (US dollar [USD] 6.82/yak), followed by cultivating an improved variety of grass in rangeland (USD 6.71/yak), improved health services (USD 5.68/yak), allowing controlled burning (USD 4.72/yak), and permanent structure of shed (USD 4.39/yak). Additionally, this analysis suggests that a policy is required to allow controlled burning to improve the condition of rangeland, which can contribute to reducing the encroachment of shrubs. Similarly, there is also a need to further explore the appropriate insurance mechanism for yaks to involve all yak herders and reduce their risk.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":49634,"journal":{"name":"Rangeland Ecology & Management","volume":"94 ","pages":"Pages 20-28"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Rangeland Ecology & Management","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550742424000095","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Yak herding, a market-based tradition, is vanishing gradually. The changing environment such as climate change, policy context, and socioeconomic change is not in favor of yak herding. Using a choice experiment survey approach, this study determines the yak herders’ preferences to improve yak herding in Kanchenjunga Landscape, Nepal. The results of the choice response analysis indicate that yak herders prefer to improve yak herding by improving rangeland management, infrastructure, and health and safety services. Herders have a high preference for yak insurance (US dollar [USD] 6.82/yak), followed by cultivating an improved variety of grass in rangeland (USD 6.71/yak), improved health services (USD 5.68/yak), allowing controlled burning (USD 4.72/yak), and permanent structure of shed (USD 4.39/yak). Additionally, this analysis suggests that a policy is required to allow controlled burning to improve the condition of rangeland, which can contribute to reducing the encroachment of shrubs. Similarly, there is also a need to further explore the appropriate insurance mechanism for yaks to involve all yak herders and reduce their risk.
期刊介绍:
Rangeland Ecology & Management publishes all topics-including ecology, management, socioeconomic and policy-pertaining to global rangelands. The journal''s mission is to inform academics, ecosystem managers and policy makers of science-based information to promote sound rangeland stewardship. Author submissions are published in five manuscript categories: original research papers, high-profile forum topics, concept syntheses, as well as research and technical notes.
Rangelands represent approximately 50% of the Earth''s land area and provision multiple ecosystem services for large human populations. This expansive and diverse land area functions as coupled human-ecological systems. Knowledge of both social and biophysical system components and their interactions represent the foundation for informed rangeland stewardship. Rangeland Ecology & Management uniquely integrates information from multiple system components to address current and pending challenges confronting global rangelands.