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(not quite)PALEONEWS:Widespread Starvation Feared in Brutal Mongolian Winter



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This is a CNN custom news article.
CNN has recently changed formats so I can not give you the URL.
I recommend registering at cnn.com for your own custom news to 
access the article online-   -Betty
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Widespread Starvation Feared in Brutal Mongolian Winter

GOBI DESERT, Mongolia (AP) -- From one isolated family of nomads to
another, the grisly sight is the same across Mongolia's vast and frozen
Gobi Desert and nearby mountains. 

Thickly furred, frozen carcasses of livestock are stacked waist-high
near the traditional tents of their herders. More animals lie where they
fell in bare pastures, all victims of the country's coldest winter in 30
years. 

The toll is staggering. 

An estimated 1.8 million herd animals, or about one of every 15 in the
nation, have died, affecting a fifth of Mongolia's 2.6 million people,
the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says. 

The toll could rise to 5 million animals, the office warns, and if more
aid from other countries is not provided by April or May a half million
Mongolians could be desperately short of food. 

The crisis strikes as Mongolia, which broke away from Soviet domination
10 years ago, is still struggling with its difficult transition to
democracy and a free-market economy. 

"After June, we will be very hungry," said Tserendorj, a 73-year-old
nomadic woman inside her family "ger," the round felt tent that is the
traditional, portable home of Mongolia's nomads. Like many Mongolians,
she uses only one name. 

"But we are old people," she said, cradling a naked child in her lap.
"Our lives are over anyway. Our worry is for these kids and how they
will live." 

Her family of 10, living in two gers in the Gobi, was prosperous before
the weather crunch. Now, they are poor. 

In a land of few roads and phone lines, Mongolia's nomads -- about 30
percent of the population -- live the simple life of their
great-great-grandparents. Cattle, yak, two-humped camels, horses, goats
and sheep provide everything from food to barter goods to
transportation. 

But the cold has decimated the thin grasslands that the livestock rely
on. And nomads who moved their herds to unaffected areas have
overcrowded the pastures there, devastating those grasslands as well. 

Harsh weather is hardly unusual in Mongolia. In the Gobi, temperatures
can range from 40 below in the winter to 115 above in the summer. The
wind never stops blowing across the pebbly, gray-brown sand. 

But even by Mongolian standards the past year has been rough. 

First came a drought last summer. That, and an infestation of rodents,
killed off much of the grasses that sustain the livestock. Then severe
blizzards hit early, in September, freezing many animals and leaving so
much snow that the survivors couldn't graze. 

The widespread livestock deaths have many nomadic families struggling.
The sick can't get to doctors or obtain medicine. Pneumonia is on the
rise. The price of meat has soared. 

Nomadic children, who often learn to ride horses and camels at a very
early age, often can't travel to their schools many miles across the
plains. 

Because the nomads live such a spartan life to begin with, there is
little fat to trim. 

A traditional nomad breakfast, for example, consists of flour biscuits
and tea with milk. Now there is no milk for the tea because the domestic
animals that have survived often don't have milk for their own young.
Some nomads even use the dry milk from relief groups to feed newborn
livestock. 

Toughened by their hard lives, many nomads show little emotion over
their plight. But the unusually bad times are breaking some down. 

In hard-hit Dundgobi province, about 250 miles south of the capital,
Ulan Bator, Chunt, a 65-year-old nomad who looks 95, is openly
devastated by his losses. 

Blind since last year, Chunt's lower eyelids droop like a bloodhound's.
His long button-on-the-side jacket, the traditional garment called a
"hantaaz," is a shabby black. Little green socks fluttered on a line
rigged over the stove in the center of the ger, its walls covered with
the family's possessions. 

Kneeling and smoking a long jade and silver pipe, Chunt recalled how he
once had 550 sheep, goats, cows and horses -- how he was once a
prosperous man.  

Now he has 80 sheep and goats. 

"I don't know what to do," he mumbled, unaware of the child playing at
his knee. "I used to depend on the animals; now I have nothing." 

In an interview, Mongolian Prime Minister Renchinnyamin Amarjargal said
restocking the nomads' livestock will cost the poor nation as much as
idlers 10 million. He appealed for aid. 

The World Bank is contributing $1.33 million, and the United Nations,
the United States and other countries have promised help. 

But time may be running out. 

"The situation will continue to worsen. The weakened animals will die in
big numbers," said Amgaa Oyungerel, spokeswoman for the Mongolian Red
Cross. 

"By May, the herders will face food shortages. The health problem is
also alarming, with people physically exhausted and psychologically
wounded. They are very vulnerable." 

-- 
Flying Goat Graphics
http://www.flyinggoat.com
(Society of Vertebrate Paleontology member)
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