Agro-pastoral ecotone is considered as an important and crucial ecological function area in Chinese ecological conservation. However, it is experiencing serious ecological degradation because of human effect. In order to explore measures for ecological improvement, local people and their relationship with ecological environment must be figured out. Taking farmer household as major stakeholder, we intend to derive their household strategies and plans by investigating their attitude and perception and link them with ecological improvement. Local people′s attitude and perception to agriculture and agricultural policies were investigated in the Hongqitan Catchment, a typical zone of Chinese agro-pastoral ecotone. The results showed that local people held different attitude and perception to crop production and livestock rearing. Crop production provides them with basic food and income, and most people would like to expand their cropland holding so as to increase their family income. At the same time, they wish to derive more stalks as forage in livestock rearing. However, some people would not like to expand their cropland holding due to limited labor force and low foodstuff price. At present, livestock rearing is the main source of local economic income. Although most people were not satisfied with the number of livestock they possessed, it was hard for them to increase the number of livestock because of the limited forage and grassland. As for agricultural policies, the policy of Grain for Green Project, which was implemented to improve local ecological environment, gained the support of almost all interviewees. However, its sustainability would meet serious challenge after the eight-year of compensation period. In addition, local people were prohibited from browsing in converted woodland, as a result, the contradiction aroused by protection or utilization of converted woodland occurred, which became a tough problem for local governmental management. In the end, the links between local ecological improvement and people′s perception were analyzed and some measures for local ecological improvement and sustainable development were put forward and summarized as follows. First, natural laws should be followed in ecological rehabilitation. Grassland ecosystem is more fitting to local physical conditions than agricultural ecosystem, and the latter is one of main reasons for local ecological degradation. So grassland ecosystem should be rebuilt and utilized protectively. Some measures must be done to prevent crop production from expanding and convert it into grassland gradually or change its effect from foodstuff production to fodder production. It is also helpful for local livestock rearing which is given high expectation by local people. Second, local people should be taken as main stakeholder of ecological compensation and conservation during ecological improvement. Or else, they would lose enthusiasm for ecological improvement. On the other hand, local people′s economic production should be adapted to not only local ecological environment but also market demands. Third, measures for ecological improvement should not be restricted in local study area. Regional cooperation is necessary for local ecological improvement. For example, urbanization and market-oriented mechanism provide favorable conditions for reducing local population pressure. All in all, the paper could be taken as a pilot study about coupled human and natural systems, and it is helpful for decision-making in ecosystem management.