"So far this year upward of 2 million livestock animals have died, according to official statistics."

"For nomads eking out a living by herding animals on Mongolia’s vast steppes, the deadliest winters used to come only once a decade, freezing the grasslands into solid ice or coating everything with so much snow that livestock died of cold or hunger en masse.

Now the frigid “dzud” winters come every other year, if not annually. It’s a tragic knock-on effect of the climate change rapidly drying and desertifying the nation throughout the other seasons.

Last year was particularly brutal, killing livestock by the hundreds of thousands and stranding herding families, who make up at least a third of Mongolia’s 3.3 million people, without access to food, animal feed or medicine.

This year is even worse."

Alexander C. Kaufman reports for HuffPost February 25, 2024. [2]