The vast grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau constitute a critically important environment providing many key ecological services such as carbon storage, soil erosion control, and water regulation. The Three-River Headwater Region of the Plateau—also known as the Sanjiangyuan region; encompassing the source areas of the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong rivers with a total area of 363,000 km2, larger than Germany—is particularly significant for China and Southeast Asia. Wang et al.(2010) are correct to encourage its conservation. However, this land also is home to around 300,000 Tibetan pastoralists who have adapted their way of life over generations and learned to live successfully in the harsh, often unpredictable environment. Now, several conservation-oriented government policies such as Ecological Migration (EM) are threatening not only local pastoralists’ livelihood and community structure, but also regional stability as quotadriven resettlements are married with high levels of unemployment and loss of hope (Foggin 2008). EM is all too often accepted with little critique in China. For example, Wang et al.(2010) fail even to mention that EM could, just possibly, best be abandoned. Despite some of the clear social and environmental challenges that already have begun to emerge, as indicated by the authors themselves, they still positively encourage its continuation and expansion. Such a position is astonishing, since the EM policy remains an untested social experiment at an enormous scale—with potential devastating long-term (generational) social, cultural, and possibly environmental consequences; some of them irreversible. The primary environmental rationale behind EM is largely inadequate, in as much as sufficient scientific evidence for both the scale and the underlying causes of grassland degradation are still lacking (Harris 2010); and even where there is observed degradation, this still does not warrant or necessarily point toward EM as the only possible solution. More importantly, several alternate approaches to conservation already exist, including certain traditional resource management practices and other tried-and-tested forms of local governance such as co-management schemes (Banks et al. 2003; Reed 2008). In addition, due to the expected impacts of relocation and resettlement on such a large number of people (some media suggest plans for over half a million people in the province to be ‘‘settled’’permanently), development and conservation agendas should be more carefully integrated in the future. A relatively new approach to public policy research and analysis is, therefore, recommended—horizontal policy coordination (not only a vertical, insular analysis within single fields or government bureaus)—so that the complex issues of conservation and sustainable development can be considered more effectively in an increasingly globalized world. Now before embarking on such an irreversible, largescale, and untested social experiment… Would it not be wise to learn from other similar experiences elsewhere in the world?