ULAN BATOR, Feb 25 (NNN-APA) – The number of livestock deaths caused by the extreme weather has exceeded two million, so far this winter, in Mongolia, the country’s State Emergency Commission (SEC) said, yesterday.
“At least 2,009,000 heads of livestock have died due to the dzud across the country,” the SEC said in a statement.
“Dzud” is a Mongolian term for a severely cold winter, when a large number of livestock die because the ground is frozen or covered with snow.
Over 80 percent of the country has so far been blanketed by snow, according to the country’s weather monitoring agency.
As one of the last surviving nomadic countries in the world, Mongolia has recently elevated its disaster preparedness to high alert, due to the harsh winter and livestock loss.
The promotion of livestock husbandry is seen as the most viable way to diversify the landlocked country’s mining-dependent economy.
At the end of last year, the number of livestock in Mongolia stood at 64.7 million, according to the National Statistics Office.– NNN-APA
