Dead animals litter the landscape as far as the eye can see–across the dusty, bleak steppes bordering the Gobi Desert, where nomadic herdsmen have roamed for thousands of years alongside their livestock.
The bleached bones of the first to die, the furry carcasses of more recent victims and barely breathing animals on the verge of death lie scattered across the barren terrain, evidence of an extraordinary convergence of natural disasters.
More than 2 million cows, goats, sheep, horses and camels perished last winter alone.
The spring sunshine is melting the snow, but the dying isn’t over. Grass won’t grow again until June, and animals weakened by their winter ordeal are starving. It is feared the toll could rise to 5 million, jeopardizing the livelihoods of tens of thousands of herders.
“This is a disaster for animals, but above all, it’s a disaster for people,” said Douglas Gardner, who is overseeing the United Nation’s relief effort in Mongolia. “Animals are literally the backbone of life for these people. All of their needs, for heat, for shelter, for food, are met by animals.”
In an effort to stave off a humanitarian disaster, the UN last week issued an emergency appeal for animal fodder; a rare instance in which food aid is being sought for animals. “The best way to save the people is to save the animals,” Gardner said.
In the longer term, the consequences could also prove devastating to Mongolia’s struggle to rebuild its economy after more than 70 years of communism, and for the delicate ecosystem that has sustained people in this inhospitable place for thousands of years.
Wedged between Russia and China, Mongolia is one of the last places on Earth where nomadic husbandry is a mainstay of the economy. Just 2.4 million people live scattered across a vast area half the size of India. A third of them are herders.
Telephone lines are few and paved roads are scarce, so horses are the chief means of transport and communication. Animal skins line their homes and animal dung is the fuel that keeps them warm.
In the summer, herdsmen abstain from meat while their livestock graze. Mutton supplies sustenance during the winter, when temperatures average between 5 and 20 degrees below zero. Goats provide wool, which is sold for cash to buy staples such as tea, flour and sugar.
A succession of calamities over the last year has overturned the natural balance. A particularly harsh winter, a phenomenon known as a dzud, occurs about every 30 years, and the last one was in 1967-68. But snow and cold were not the only causes of this disaster.
A fierce drought last summer stunted the growth of the grass. Then came a plague of rodents that competed with the animals for what little grass had managed to grow.
On top of that, the first snow fell early, in September, covering the ground and depriving the animals of much needed food before winter. By the time the storms hit, sending temperatures plunging to 70 degrees below zero in some places, the animals began dropping dead by the hundreds of thousands.
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For the nomads, watching the animals die has been devastating.
“In just one night, we lost all our horses,” said Tambaldorg Delgorsuren, 68, whose eyes filled with tears as she ticked off the toll on her family’s livestock.
“We had more than 50. Now only have six. We had 26 cows, and now there are three. We had 500 sheep, and half of them are gone. We had 100 goats, and now there are 10. “These animals have been with me all my life.”
In the epicenter of the crisis, an arc of territory just north of the Gobi Desert and some 350 miles south of Ulan Bator, Mongolia’s capital, the devastation is vivid. Dead animals are stacked in piles alongside the gers, the traditional felt tents in which the nomads live. In the warm spring sunshine, they are starting to thaw, emitting the sickly odor of rotting flesh.
Gaunt cattle and emaciated horses wander listlessly among the carcasses, scratching for vegetation that won’t grow for another two months.
A dozen or so ponies stand dully on a patch of barren land, too weary even to try to eat. Three lie dying on the ground; a fourth stumbles and struggles to rise to its feet, but is too weak.
Most of the newest victims are sheep. “When they give birth they are dying, because they are weak, and the lambs are dying because the mothers don’t have milk,” said Delgorsuren.
The catastrophe in Mongolia is hardly the worst natural disaster to afflict the world this year. Flooding in Mozambique and drought in the Horn of Africa have put the lives of millions of people at risk.
So far, it is only animals that are dying in Mongolia, but the crisis also threatens people. Though the death toll represents only a fraction of Mongolia’s 33 million animals, the storms hit some areas worse than others, leaving pockets of territory in which entire herds have been wiped out and whole families left destitute. Others have lost too many animals to sustain their existence.
“We have been scissored, by hot sun in the summer and by snow in the winter,” lamented herdsman Enkhbat Namdag, who has lost 140 horses, 80 cows and 500 sheep and goats–about half his herd.
“I don’t know what we’ll do or why we are being punished. Our only source of life is those animals we had.”
Some experts believe weather alone cannot fully explain the scale of the catastrophe. Under communist rule, government officials were required to spend a month every summer in the countryside, cutting hay to be stored as fodder for the winter. That is a task that herdsmen traditionally had performed, and there have been accusations that the practice made the nomads lazy.
Herders respond defensively. “If we had known, maybe we could have taken measures to prevent it, but we didn’t know and no one could have guessed it would be this bad,” said Namdag.
“What animal can survive those temperatures?”
The wrenching social and economic changes brought by the collapse of communism may have exacerbated the crisis. For the first time in 70 years, herders were permitted to market their produce for cash. Since animals were privatized in 1992, the livestock population has soared from 25 million to 33 million, reflecting the sudden value that they acquired.
The rapid increase might have tilted the ecological balance beyond sustainability. Herdsmen who had typically roamed across a vast area began to concentrate closer to market centers, leading to overgrazing.
At the same time, tens of thousands of Mongolians were losing their jobs as bloated state-run factories underwent privatization. Some who had given up nomadic life for a job in the city began returning to the countryside, putting further pressure on resources.
The death of so many animals is reversing that trend, sending herders back into the cities in search of work, swelling the numbers of urban jobless.
Prices for meat, milk, leather and wool have more than doubled, hurting those already struggling to in urban areas.
“The experience of other countries is that climatic disasters can lead to fundamental social changes in the medium to long term,” the UN’s Gardner said.
“The complexity of this has yet to be played out.”