It has been six years since Zhaduo was moved away from his home on the ecologically vulnerable grassland on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, but the 33-year-old said he still misses his yaks and the life of a herdsman.

"The money for selling 40 yaks and 25 sheep has been used," Zhaduo said. "It is so expensive to now live near the town center. Everything costs big money."

Zhaduo is one of the emigrants from Rima village in Yushu County of northwest China’s Qinghai Province, near the source of China' s three major rivers - the Yangtze, the Yellow River, and the Lancang River -- which form the world' s highest plateau wetland, known as Asia' s water tower.

China started moving people out of the 150,000-sq-kilometer Sanjiangyuan region more than five years ago in a bid to repair the ecological system damaged by excessive herding and to transform the area into an unpopulated nature reserve.

So far, some 50,000 herdsmen, mostly Tibetans, have bid farewell to the nomadic life and were moved closer to the town centers near their old homes, where they have better access to health and educational resources.

Zhaduo now lives in Jiajiniang village, twelve minutes' drive from Gyegu township of Yushu. The family is surviving by picking mountain-grown caterpillar fungus.

Zhaduo basically has no jobs in the months other than the harvest season from May to June, and he has no sense of security since he is relying on a business which can be bankrupt by inadequate rainfalls or abnormal climate changes.

"There is no way to return - the grassland is sealed off by the government and, anyway, I don' t have money to buy yaks and sheep," Zhaduo said.

China' s policy makers have been urged to double their efforts to help the Sanjiangyuan emigrants adapt to the new life so the herdsmen who have no job skills do not have to be sacrificed by the massive ecological repair project.

The government has earmarked 7.5 billion yuan (US$900 million) for the project.

Li Xiaonan, deputy director of the Sanjiangyuan Ecological Preservation and Construction Office, said since efforts began to repair the wetland, it is now able to hold more water and the quality of the water has improved.

The rising population, as well as overgrazing, have been blamed for the deteriorating ecosystem.

Official statistics show that only 130,000 people lived in the prefectures of Guoluo and Yushu of the Sanjiangyuan region in 1949. However, the population grew five times over the past six decades.

Li said the resettlement of 50,000 herdsmen is the key to improving the ecosystem, but the government will now have to find ways to provide more forms of aid, other than handing out quotas of free grain and cash subsidies to the resettled herdsmen.

Additionally, the provincial government offers vocational training and has set aside funds to encourage small private businesses.

Gongsangranjia is one of a few beneficiaries. He runs a Tibetan drug store near the town in the heart of Nangqian County, Yushu prefecture. Gongsangranjia and his family of ten moved out of the grassland 110 kilometers away from town some seven years ago.

Since then, he sold two hundred yaks and sheep to build a spacious house and set up a drug store.

"The store income averages 300 to 400 yuan a day. The business is not bad," said Caiding, Gongsangranjia' s wife.

Wang Hengsheng, a researcher with the Qinghai Academy of Social Sciences, said the resettlement program is not just "moving people out" but also helping them live a better life in a different environment.

"If they can not survive by themselves in the new environment, the Sanjiangyuan region won’t be able to achieve a long-term coordinated development of the ecosystem and the economy," Wang said.

Ping Zhiqiang, an official with the provincial Development and Reform Commission of Qinghai, said the government should help resettled herdsman master a marketable trade and assist the region in developing a profitable sector. Only then can the improvement of the ecosystem be secured.

(Xinhua News Agency September 23, 2010)