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It is not scientific to manage grasslands as farmland and manage nomads as farmers. We report evidence from Inner Mongolia that privatization of grassland use rights has led to large-scale wire fencing, grassland conversion to farming, excessive livestock stocking, and crises in grassland ecology, herders' living conditions and the Mongolian nomadic culture. The paper concludes that the ecological and cultural function of nomadism is non-substitutable from the perspectives of ecological security and cultural inheritance. The authors suggest that we should abolish private grassland use rights, tear down wire fencing, abolish set stocking rates and establish a legal nomad administrative licensing system to resume nomadism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]