Policy and management have long been marshalled to face the unpredictable, but the Anthropocene underscores the intensifying social, economic, and environmental instabilities from human interventions, not least of which are in the form of policy and management. This is nowhere truer than for the various forms of pastoralism. In fact, for many pastoralists and herders, it’s always been the Anthropocene. This presentation is for those who understand that the Anthropocene requires different ways of thinking and analyzing big policy and big management when it comes to pastoralists and herders. No more chop-logics about starting with risks, determine the trade-offs, and establish priorities. No more about too-little/too-late, or there is no alternative but to [whatever], or anyway, next is worse. Even where that might hold, they hold only so far, and they certainly do not go far enough. The Anthropocene is too complex for that. A complex policy or management issue said to be ‘intractable’ is all too often one that has yet to be recast more tractably without losing its complexity. Some policymakers, policy analysts, and public managers already know complexity is the enemy of the intractable, not its definition. Fortunately, the more complex an issue, the more opportunities to recast the issue tractably. This too is true for “pastoralist development.” None of this recasting is easy or guaranteed. Fortunately, the more complex the issue, the greater chances in usefully differentiating between managing, controlling, and coping ahead with respect to that complexity and its utility. The presentation will give examples to illustrate these points.