dust storms

uxury fashion house Kering, owners of Gucci and Stella McCartney, identified a challenge in their supply chain: exponentially increasing demand for cashmere had led to a four-fold increase in goats nationwide over the span of a decade. The challenges were multi-faceted. The overabundance of goats were devouring local vegetation, even the roots. With nothing to anchor the soil, giant dust storms began to form, causing significant problems for the herders and reducing air quality in cities from Beijing to California. Local biodiversity suffered, with less forage available for already rare wildlife. Herders were also struggling; as the quality of the cashmere was decreasing, prices per goat were falling.

NOMGON SOUM, MONGOLIA—A massive sandstorm is crashing in over South Gobi province, darkening afternoon skies over the village meeting house where dozens of chattering herders from far-

the grazing goats have meant less vegetation available for native large mammals in this remote and arid ecosystem. Numbers of gazelle and khulan (an Asiatic wild ass) have fallen, meaning less food for snow leopards, whose population has also dropped

After the collapse of the communist Mongolian People’s Republic in 1990, Mongolia abandoned the quota system that previously governed the number of animals permitted to graze on its lands. Since then, its grazing livestock population has jumped from 20 million to 61.5 million. Goats now account for more than half of all livestock, which has proven environmentally disastrous: Goats eat the roots and flowers needed to seed new grasses, so when a herd uproots a pasture, what grows back is sparser and often poisonous (inedible plants generally replace native grasses). Unmoored soil is swept up into dust storms, reaching as far south as Beijing and Hong Kong.

dust storms Dust storms, attributable to overgrazing and desertification, reach sites beyond Mongolia's borders (potentially as far as California). Rangeland health is therefore an issue of global impact, deserving international attention.