In Machali, a "relocation village" for former herdsmen in Madoi county, the residents have quickly grown accustomed to their new lives.

 

The nearly 200 households comprise former herdsmen who previously lived in two townships near the head of the Yellow River in the Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve in Golog prefecture, Qinghai province.

 

In recent years, the local government has imposed a quota system on herding in the reserve, with the aim of protecting the local ecosystem by preventing roaming animals from stripping the grasses that hold the topsoil together and causing larger areas of land to become deserts. That has resulted in more than half of the county's approximately 10,000 herdsmen settling down in relocation villages near the county town or alongside important major roads.

 

In the 1980s, a combination of mining and herding saw Madoi register the highest per-capita GDP of all counties in China, but the influences of global warming, excessive herding and over-mining brought economic disaster.

 

Worse was to follow. In the 1990s, the lakes began to dry up. During the 1980s, the area boasted more than 4,000 lakes with areas of 0.06 sq km or larger, but by 2004 that number had fallen to just 261, according to Ma Gui, deputy director of the Madoi Department of Agriculture and Forestry.

 

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