Source: AP (The Associated Press)       June 03, 2010

The loss of so much livestock is devastating Mongolia. 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 Mr. 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."

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. Herders do not dare comb their 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 Chinggis Khaan, 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 Herders form a powerful constituency; parliament rescinded a head tax on livestock to curry favor with them.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.

"We Mongolians did not treat nature properly. Nature is taking revenge. It's all our fault," said a 34-year-old herder who drove his herd of 1,000 through three different counties in the winter trying to find pasture not buried under snow. Only 100 of his herd remain.

Government officials and development experts say herders are contributing to the problem. 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. Much of the increase is in goats valued for cashmere, which 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. After three harsh winters a decade ago, more than 70,000 herders ended up in Ulaanbaatar, 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.

Clearing away the dead animals is the top priority. Carcasses litter the pastures, where they are picked at by dogs and eagles. Some of the goats and cows have been skinned to sell the hides, exposing the rotting flesh beneath. Sickness and depression are running through the herders' camps, compounding their economic woes.

"There's a restlessness among the herd. They suddenly get scared by the carcasses, and when they're hungry they bite the wool of the dead sheep. It affects their behavior very much," said a herder, once a member of the local legislature. As the weather warms, the pneumonia and other viruses in the rotting carcasses could be transmitted to live animals and then on to the herders.

If rotting carcasses "get into the water supply, that would be a huge catastrophe," said Mr. Akbar Usmani, the UNDP's representative in Mongolia. Burying the carcasses is the only option, U.N. experts said, because Mongolia's dry climate makes burning them too dangerous.

Reminders of the dzud will remain. There's not enough manpower to pick up all the carcasses. And in Mongolia's cold, dry climate, animal hides take 6 months to rot, their flesh and sinews 7 months, and their bones 10 years.