"More than 8.2 million animals, nearly a fifth of all livestock in Mongolia, have died in a winter of snow, cold, and gales"
Related: From Outer Mongolia
AmeriKan MSM Complicit in ClimateGate
Yeah, go tell the Mongolians how warm it was, MSM?
"Mongolian herders struggle with losses; Fifth of livestock in country killed by harsh winter" by Charles Hutzler, Associated Press | June 6, 2010
UYANGA, Mongolia — Before he can fully tend to his dwindling herd, Demberel has to bury the dead cows, goats, and sheep in earth barely thawed from Mongolia’s worst winter in decades.
Fetid and fly-ridden, the carcasses lie stacked by the hundreds around a burial pit dug by Demberel, a 50-year-old herder and trained veterinarian, and a dozen fellow herders. A truck brings dozens more carcasses. Others lie in piles or strewn in nearby valleys, potential health hazards for animals and humans alike....
More than 8.2 million animals, nearly a fifth of all livestock in Mongolia, have died in a winter of snow, cold, and gales so severe Mongolians have a special term for it — “dzud.’’ A sense of loss and the stench of decay hang over one broad valley after another across the vast range lands.
The loss of so much livestock is devastating in Mongolia, a poor, landlocked country the size of Alaska. A third of its 2.7 million people are herders, wealth is measured by the hoof, and livestock outnumber people, 15 to 1.
“For many herders, livestock is their main source of income. It’s their business. It’s what they do. That’s why the loss the herders are experiencing is the same as when a company or a bank goes bankrupt,’’ said Purev Zagarzusem, governor of Uyanga, an administrative district and one of the worst-hit areas. “Other countries have tsunamis or earthquakes, for example, and people lose their lives and possessions. In Mongolia a dzud is a disaster on a similar scale.’’
Why did the Gulf Oil Gusher just seep into my mind?
At a time when green shoots of grass sprout from the brown earth and herds should be migrating from winter camps to summer pastures, the animals are too weak to feed and travel. More are dying in sporadic snow squalls and high winds.
Demberel doesn’t dare comb his remaining goats for the fine hairs used to make cashmere, a main source of income, because the already unnerved animals might catch cold and die....
This dzud is raising uncomfortable questions about the herders’ way of life, as integral to the Mongolian identity as Genghis Khan, whose image graces currency notes and vodka bottles. The constitution enshrines livestock as protected national wealth. Herders form a powerful constituency; parliament rescinded a head tax on livestock to curry favor with them.
The government, in a report last year, identified the unfenced grasslands and the herds that roam there as acutely vulnerable to climate change, citing more frequent droughts and harsh dzud winters....
You mean global warming, right?
Government officials and development experts say herders are contributing to the problem.
Yeah, BLAME the VICTIMS again, you PoS paper!
BLAME FARMERS and RANCHERS!!!
Since Mongolia dumped the planned economy and its Soviet client-state status for free markets 20 years ago, livestock numbers have more than doubled, to 42 million head.
A victim of their own prosperity?
Much of the increase is in goats valued for cashmere, who eat voraciously, damaging the roots of grasses and other plants that anchor the soil and prevent the pasture from turning to desert.
While the government wants to move herders into other lines of work and decrease herds, an uncontrolled exodus from the steppe is already under way.
So they really are not minding what is happening, are they?
After three harsh winters a decade ago, more than 70,000 herders ended up in Ulan Bator, swelling the shanty town fringes of the capital and mainly living on government handouts. The flow is expected to accelerate if the aftermath of the latest dzud is not controlled.
This dzud started with a drought last summer. When October rains came and froze, the ice was followed by snow, sealing the stunted grass away from the animals.
Temperatures plummeted to 40 below zero and colder. In many places, animals started dying in February and then kept dying.
And ARE STILL DYING?!?!!
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