The book is an ambitious attempt to cover a very wide range of topics related to Biodiversity Conservation and Land Protection and to serve the interests of a wide variety of plants, ecosystems, managements, rangelands and livestock. Central Asia is vast, and the environmental diversity reflects the contrasts that give rise within the region of the coldest and hottest deserts, extensive steppe, grasslands and rangelands, alpine meadows, glacier fields, and mountains and plains. It is this great variation in geography, topography, and climate that provides the rich and unique diversity found in the region’s ecosystems. There is great disparity too in the ethnicity of its peoples and the economic status of the various countries within the region. The pressures on these rich natural resources (including water from the high mountains) and environmental systems generally have, however, been increasing over the past few decades. Rapid population growth, urbanization, rising economic output, and more consumptive lifestyles, coupled with increasing incidence of poverty, have all contributed to the region’s struggle to adjust to the market economy and the demands of the increasingly disenfranchised citizens, especially those on or just above the poverty line.