An extreme winter weather event has killed at least two million head of livestock in Mongolia
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For some parts of the northern hemisphere, winter 2023-24 has been unusually mild. But that’s not the case in Mongolia. This landlocked, central Asian country is used to bitter winters with temperatures sometimes dipping to a bone-chilling minus 50 degrees Celsius, but this year has been hard even by Mongolian standards with much of the country being hammered by a weather phenomenon known as a dzud. Unique to Mongolia, a dzud is extreme winter weather characterised by freezing temperatures, heavy snow and ground so frozen that livestock and wild animals cannot reach the pasture grass.
With a population of just 3.3 million, this vast nation is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world and about one-third of Mongolians are nomadic and reliant on their livestock. The country has around 64.7 million head of livestock for which it is economically reliant for the production of meat and cashmere, which is one of the country’s main exports.
But the dzud of this winter, which follows on from a dry summer and a dzud last winter, has devastated livestock populations. Gantulga Batsaikhan, from the country’s agriculture ministry has announced that as of 26 February around 2.1 million head of livestock had died from exposure, starvation and exhaustion brought on by the unusual cold and being unable to break through the ice and snow to feed.
Worryingly, the UN has said that thanks to climate change and poor environmental governance the intensity and frequency of dzuds has been increasing since 2015 and that the country has experienced six dzuds over the past decade. The dzud of winter 2022-23 killed 4.4 million head of livestock, while the worst on record took place over the winter of 2010-11 when around 10 million of head of livestock perished.
This years dzud though is made worse by it being both a ‘white’ and ‘iron’ dzud with the white indicating exceptionally heavy snowfall – currently the heaviest since 1975 – and the iron representing the frozen ground. In addition, a drier than normal summer last year meant that livestock were unable to build up sufficient fat reserves to see them safely through a hard winter. All of this adds up to mean that authorities and aid agencies are concerned that this winter might turn out to be one of the deadliest yet. Already around 70 per cent of the country is suffering under dzud conditions this winter compared to 17 per cent last winter.
These fears have led the government to promise to help with the launching of a campaign to deliver fodder to herders and prevent further loss of livestock.
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