A work-for-cash program, financed with a $1.5 million grant from the United Nations, pays herders in Mongolia to gather animal carcasses and bury them in pits, after the historic summer drought and brutally cold winter. Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times

By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: May 19, 2010 SOUTH HANGAY PROVINCE, Mongolia — They call it the zud, a prolonged period of heavy snows and paralyzing cold that adds to the challenges of living on a treeless expanse nearly the size of Alaska. But this year’s zud followed a punishing summer drought that stunted the grass and left Munkhbat Lkhagvasuren’s herds emaciated and his family in debt after borrowing money for fodder. As the snow piled waist high this winter and temperatures plunged to 40 below zero, Mr. Lkhagvasuren crammed two dozen of the weakest goats and sheep into his yurt. The unlucky ones, more than 1,000 animals, froze to death in a great heap outside his front door. “I tried everything but could not fight against nature,” he said tearfully in a recent interview, the stench of rotting flesh overpowering despite a devilish wind. “I am broken and lost.” Mongolia and its 800,000 herders are reeling from the worst winter that anyone can remember. According to United Nations relief officials, nearly eight million cows, yaks, camels, horses, goats and sheep died, about 17 percent of the country’s livestock. Even if the spring rains arrive soon, 500,000 more animals are expected to succumb in the coming weeks. “This is not only a catastrophe for the herders but for the entire Mongolian economy,” said Akbar Usmani, the resident representative for the United Nations Development Program. “We expect the ripple effects for months and years to come.” The last serious zuds, three consecutive harsh winters between 1999 and 2002, sent thousands of destitute nomads streaming into the capital, Ulan Bator. A decade later, their tattered yurts still crowd bleak neighborhoods on the city’s fringe as the former herders struggle to fit into the modern world. The United Nations estimates that the current disaster may prompt as many as 20,000 herders to abandon their nomadic life and flee to the city. “A lot of the herders have no skills so they usually end up breaking the law and falling into poverty,” said Buyanbadrakh, the governor of a small administrative district, known as a soum, who like some Mongolians uses a single name. He said 70 percent of the livestock in his soum, Zuunbayan-ulaan, were wiped out this year with at least 2,800 families losing their entire herds. With so many desperate nomads selling off their remaining animals to survive, the price of meat has dropped by half in recent months. “People are taking it very hard,” he said. “Some have gone crazy.” The disaster poses a challenge to a government already struggling to address the needs of the third of the population that lives in poverty. But it also raises a host of thorny questions about climate change, environmental degradation and whether the pastoral way of life that sustains many of the country’s 3 million people has a future. …

Winter Leaves Mongolians a Harvest of Carcasses