Frozen Animals on the Steppe


In the winter of 2010, herders in central mongolia faced an animal famine crisis within the slow moving disaster of desertification. That winter about 8.5 million herd animals, goats, sheep, and cattle froze to death in up to -58 degree fahrenheit temperatures. The animals are a crucial food source as well as frequently the sole wealth and economic engine for herders in the region. As in the Minamisanriku tsunami and nuclear disaster in the Spring of 2011, this crisis is a hybrid of natural and man made origins.

Desertification is the process of the degredation of plant life on the steppe, the grassland plain that provides the nutrition for herd animals. A combination of climactic change, overgrazing, and deforestation is gradually pushing the Gobi desert into the homeland of nomadic herders. A dry summer and cold wet winter in 2010 tipped the fragile ecosystem into disaster. Without proper nutrition and hydration, the animals entered the brutal winters on the steppe without the fat and strength to survive the 8 month winter.

The Mongolians have a  term “dzud” which refers to the combination of summer drought and severe winter that hardens snow and ice into an impenetrable layer and makes it impossible for livestock to feed. Like the Japanese, Mongolians know the particular risks of the region in which they live, and yet this isn’t sufficient to prevent the economic activity of grazing (in Japan, fishing) that makes them prone to disaster. In Mongolia the economic growth that came out of independence from the Soviet Union precipitated the 40% growth in livestock that precipitated the crisis. As in Japan, the risk is as high as ever that another round of dry summer and wet winter will initiate another crisis of potentially even greater magnitude.

Sky News Coverage

Further Images