Nomadic

This book offers a novel examination of socio-environmental change in a nomadic pastoralist area of the eastern Tibetan plateau. Drawing on long-term fieldwork that underscores an ethnography of local nomadic pastoralists, international development organisations, and Chinese government policies, the book argues that careful analysis and comparison of the different epistemologies and norms about "change" are vital to any critical appraisal of developments - often contested - on the grasslands of Eastern Tibet.

My interest in the behaviour and movements of birds of arid and semi-arid ecosystems began when my wife, Sue Milton, and I were Roy Siegfried, Director, at that time, of the Percy approached by Prof. FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, to set up a project to investigate granivory in the South African Karoo. Sue and I spent some time finding a suitable study site, setting up accommodations and an automatic weather station at Tierberg, in the southern Karoo near the village of Prince Albert, and planning projects. Among our first projects was a transect where we noted plant phe­ nology, measured seed densities on the soil surface, counted birds, observed ant activity, measured soil surface temperatures and col­ lected whatever climate data we could at 40 sites along a 200-km oval route. Along the way, we became interested in the marked presence and absence of birds at certain sites - abundant birds one day, and very few birds at the same site a month later. Subsequent counts along fixed transects through shrublands confirmed that a number of bird species were highly nomadic over short and long distances, locally and regionally, leading to speculation on how widespread these movements were in the arid ecosystems of the world.