Ritayan Mukherjee

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<h4>This story is part of the PARI <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/chronicling-climate-change-everyday-lives-extraordinary-stories/">series on climate change</a> that won the Ramnath Goenka Award for 2019 in the Environment Reporting category.</h4>

<a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/300-himalayan-yaks-starve-to-death-in-sikkim/article27109572.ece"></a>&#39;<a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/300-himalayan-yaks-starve-to-death-in-sikkim/article27109572.ece">300
Himalayan yaks starve to death in Sikkim</a>&#39; &#39;<a href="https://www.news18.com/news/india/trapped-in-snow-starvation-kills-nearly-300-yaks-in-north-sikkim-2137977.html">Trapped in Snow Nearly 300 Yaks Die Due to
Starvation in North Sikkim</a>&#39; &#39;<a href="https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/melting-snow-bares-sikkim-yak-tragedy/cid/1690386">Melting
snow bares Sikkim yak tragedy</a>&#39;Those
headlines of May 12 this year hit me hard. From my own trips as a
photojournalist into the Himalayas, I know that the nomadic pastoralists who
rear these animals go to any length to protect them. Across vital stretches of
those great mountains, yaks are the lifeline for high-altitude herders –
nomadic pastoralists driving a seasonal movement of livestock between fixed
summer and winter pastures. Yaks are among their primary means of earning and a
food source during wintertime.

Some
of the articles with those headlines linked the yak deaths to global warming.
It was clear that if the hardy animals were taking such a hit, their herders
would be in trouble too. I decided to return to the Changpa families in
Ladakh’s Hanle Valley and look at how both were doing. 

The
Changpas of the Changthang
region in India – a western extension of the Tibetan Plateau – are among the
foremost producers of cashmere wool, and they also rear yaks. Hanle Valley of Leh
district’s Nyoma block is home to several herding units of Changpa – Dique, Kharloog, Maque, Raque and Yulpa.
The Dique and Raque are perhaps the finest yak herders there are.

“We
are losing a lot of yaks,” says expert Dique herder Jhampal Tsering, 35, in
Hanle. “Now, the weather here [in the high mountains] is unpredictable.”  I met Tsering thanks to Sonam Dorjee of Khaldo
village in the valley, who works at the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Hanle.
Tsering talked to us in his spacious khur (army tent in the Ladakhi language) at the Taknakpo grazing
ground located at about 14,000 feet.

Three
years before the May 2019 disaster in Sikkim, the Nepal-based International
Centre for Integrated Mountain Development had published a paper noting “the
yak population in Bhutan, India and Nepal has shown a declining trend in recent
years.”  The researchers found a fall in
the yak population in India “from 132,000 in 1977 to 51,000 in 1997.” A decline
of over 60 per cent in just three decades. 

Data
from the local Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying show that Leh
district’s yak population decreased from 30,000 in 1991 to 13,000 in 2010.
That’s a steep 57 per cent fall in two decades. The local data seem at variance
with the ‘official’ figures at the top – which place the yak population in the
district at 18,877 in 2012 (in which case the decline would still have been a
sharp 37 per cent in 21 years)

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It
wasn’t easy reaching the Dique settlement. Their grazing grounds are higher
than those of other herding units. Besides, some of the areas they tent in are
close to the India-China border – places where civilians aren&#39;t allowed. Since
it was springtime, though, with Sonam Dorjee’s help, I reached the settlement.

“Yaks
are marvellous creatures,” says Jhampal Tsering. “The yak is accustomed to
freezing temperatures and can survive anything up to minus 35 or minus 40
degrees Celsius. However, it finds it troublesome when the temperature rises to
12 or 13 degrees. Throughout the harsh winter, because of their slow
metabolism, they can conserve body heat and survive. But fluctuations in the weather
put the yaks in trouble.” 

At
Kala Pari (Black Mountain), around 40 kilometres from the Dique settlement, I
met Tsiring Chonchum, one of the few women yak owners in Hanle Valley. “Because
it is warmer than earlier, the sheep, pashmina goats and yaks don’t have the
dense growth of hair on their body as they did in the past. It is a very sparse
and light growth now,” she says. “They seem to be weaker. Weaker yaks mean
lower productivity for us. Less milk, lower income. Our earnings from yaks have
gone down drastically over the last five years.” Chonchum is a transhumance
pastoralist from the Raque herding unit. Studies by independent researchers show
that the average monthly income of a herder household here, from all sources
combined, was around Rs. 8,500
a month in 2012.

Yak
milk is a significant segment of the herder’s income and may account for 60 per
cent of the total earning from rearing yaks. The rest of the Changpas’ income flows
from khuloo (yak hair) and wool.  So with the falling yak numbers and the
decline in milk production, their earnings take a nasty hit. All these changes
are placing the yak-related economy under great stress.

“It also doesn&#39;t rain on time or snow on time
anymore,” says Tsering Chonchum. “So there is not enough grass on the
mountains. Because of this, the number of [pastoral] nomads coming here has
gone down. I will say that they have reduced to about 40 per cent [of the
estimated 290 families of herders there] because of these changes, due to the
scarcity of grass and the problems arising out of that.

My son works at the local observatory – which gives
me some relief. Many young people from Changpa families have started working
for the Border Roads Organisation or the General Reserve Engineer Force as
daily wage labourers on road building schemes.” Several have migrated in search
of jobs elsewhere.

















That son working in the local observatory is Sonam
Dorjee, who has helped me pull off this trip. 
Sonam himself has been a careful observer of the changes in the
mountains.

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“There
have been many alterations in the weather,” he says. “When I was about 15 (I&#39;m
43 now, so I&#39;m talking about almost 30 years ago), it used to be much colder
here. I did not measure the temperature then myself but those who knew say that
it would dip to minus 35 Celsius. So people&#39;s clothing had to be suited to bear
that kind of harsh cold. Not the synthetic material jackets that they wear now.
Everything they wore was woven from the wool of pashmina goats – caps, dresses,
everything. The shoe soles had a flattened bit of yak skin on the inside and
the shoe was made from local cloth and had strips to tie it up, right up to
knee length. Now you don’t see those kinds anywhere.”

A
warming is underway, say researchers Tundup Angmo and S.N. Mishra in their 2016
paper on Impacts of climate change in Ladakh and
Lahaul &amp; Spiti of the western Himalayan region. “Data obtained
from the meteorological department (Air Force Station, Leh) clearly indicates
that there is a rising trend of min temp at Leh by nearly 1º C for all the
winter months and nearly 0.5ºC for summer months in last 35 years. There is a clear
declining trend in precipitation from November to March i.e. reduction in snow
fall.”

They
also say: “Over the last few years, impacts of global climate change have been
increasingly visible in Ladakh and Lahaul &amp; Spiti. Rainfall and snowfall
patterns have been changing; small glaciers and permanent snow fields are
melting, affecting water runoff in the rivers/streams, and rise in temperature
and humidity inducing favourable conditions for the invasion of insects and
pest aggression.”

Back
in Jhampal Tsering’s tent, his friend Sangda Dorjee had asked us: “How many rebos
have you seen this time?”

The
Changpas live in tents known as rebos. To make a rebo,
yak wool is spun into yarn by the families, then woven and stitched together.
The material protects the nomads from the extreme cold and icy winds.

“Most
of the families do not own a rebo [now],” says Sangda. “Where’s the wool for
stitching a new rebo? The quantity of
yak wool has gone down drastically in the past few years. Without the rebo, a significant part of
our nomadic lifestyle is gone, and I blame the warmer winter.”

I
begin to realise that incident in May in Sikkim was not entirely random. Worse
could be ahead. The herders do not use the words climate change but seem to
describe its impacts quite well. And they do understand that very major shifts
have occurred, as Sonam Dorjee’s and Tsering Chonchum’s words show us. They
also understand that some of the major variations, even transformations, have
been significantly driven by human agency. Maybe that’s why veteran herder
Gumbu Tashi, in his 60s, told me: “Yes, I know the climate in the mountain is
tricky. Unpredictable. Perhaps we made the mountain god angry.”

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PARI’s nationwide reporting project on climate change is part of a UNDP-supported initiative to capture that phenomenon through the voices and lived experience of ordinary people. Want to republish this article?  Please write to <a href="mailto:zahra@ruralindiaonline.org">zahra@ruralindiaonline.org</a> with a cc to <a href="mailto:namita@ruralindiaonline.org">namita@ruralindiaonline.org</a>

‘Perhaps we made the mountain god angry’

‘बुझाता हमनीके पहाड़ के खीस बरा देले बानी’

‘सायेद हमन पहाड़ देंवता ला नराज कर दे हवन’

‘మేము పర్వతాల దేవుళ్లకి కోపం తెప్పించినట్టున్నాం’

'ਸ਼ਾਇਦ ਅਸਾਂ ਪਹਾੜੀ ਦੇਵਤਾ ਨੂੰ ਨਰਾਜ਼ ਕਰ ਦਿੱਤਾ'

‘ഒരു പക്ഷെ ഞങ്ങൾ മലദൈവത്തെ ചൊടിപ്പിച്ചിരിക്കാം’

‘ನಾವು ಬಹುಶಃ ಪರ್ವತ ದೇವರನ್ನು ಸಿಟ್ಟಿಗೆಬ್ಬಿಸಿದ್ದೇವೆ’

எனினும், மலைக்கடவுளை நாம்தான் கோபப்பட வைத்திருக்கிறோம்

'কিজানি আমি পাহাৰ দেৱতাক বিতুষ্ট কৰিলোঁ'

‘পর্বত দেবতা নির্ঘাৎ আমাদের উপর রুষ্ট হয়েছেন’

’پہاڑ کے دیوتا کو ہم نے شاید ناراض کر دیا‘

लद्दाख के चरवाहे: ‘शायद हमने पहाड़ देवता को नाराज़ कर दिया है’

“લાગે છે આપણે પર્વત દેવને નારાજ કર્યા છે”

‘आम्ही डोंगरदेवाचा रोष ओढवून घेतलाय बहुतेक’

‘ବୋଧହୁଏ ଆମେ ପାହାଡ଼ ଦେବତାଙ୍କୁ ରଗେଇ ଦେଲୁ’

Hanle

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चला, पारीची एक सफर करूया

पारीवर तुमचं मनापासून स्वागत

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Want to republish this article? Please write to <a href="mailto:zahra@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">zahra@ruralindiaonline.org</a> with a cc to <a href="mailto:namita@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">namita@ruralindiaonline.org</a>

‘Perhaps we made the mountain god angry’

Nomadic Changpa pastoralists at the high grazing grounds of Ladakh find their yak-related economy in a crisis that is driven by major climatic shifts in their fragile mountainous ecosystems

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