Synergy between ecological and economic benefits of grassland animal husbandry: Maduo County, Qinghai Province as an example

Human activities and climate change pose increasing threats to the sustainability of the vast grasslands of Qinghai Province. Delayed slaughtering of livestock is common in alpine pastures because of the traditions and culture of the local people and ecological constraints, such as low temperatures. This traditional livestock husbandry system has led to grassland overload and subsequent degradation. Therefore, there is an urgent need to explore an optimal strategy for the development of livestock husbandry that accounts for both economic and ecological benefits. Maduo County, Guoluo Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, is considered an example. Combining the statistics from the period of 2012−2021, the behavior data collected from field interviews with herdsmen, and the methodology in calculating energy and feed requirements from the IPCC Guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventories, we derived an annual grass biomass consumption of 4.430×10⁵ t∙a⁻¹ over the past ten years, with an overload rate of 17.34% compared to the carrying capacity of grassland ecosystem in Maduo County (3.776×10⁵ t∙a⁻¹). From the grass biomass consumption (i.e., 1.369×10⁵ t∙a⁻¹), 30.90% was forage waste caused by the herdsmen being “reluctant to sell” and delayed slaughtering. We further set up two optimal scenarios, “maintaining livestock slaughtering numbers at current level + accelerating slaughtering” and “maintaining livestock stocking numbers at current level + accelerating slaughtering”, to exploit the potential for increasing meat production. We found that if livestock were slaughtered or sold earlier, the production efficiency of animal husbandry in Maduo County could increase by 23%−86%. The potential to increase the yield of meat products could reach 58% with a livestock sector GDP increase of 62.26 million Yuan while grass forage consumption was still below the ecological carrying capacity. This study provides a pivotal case study that exploits potential ways to balance the ecological and economic benefits of alpine pasture systems.