Following grass and water, moving with the seasons: How millennia-old nomadic wisdom sustains green grasslands

Every summer, the Ar Horqin Banner in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, hosts its annual seasonal pasture migration. More than 1,200 herding families drive over 80,000 head of livestock along the rivers toward six major summer grazing camps.

This age-old seasonal relocation, carried on for a thousand years, is far more than a journey — it is the breath of the grassland ecosystem. The ancient wisdom of rotational grazing across seasons and matching herd sizes to pasture capacity has now been integrated into modern governance frameworks for grass-livestock balance, rest grazing, and grazing bans, keeping the grassland thriving for generations to come.