Climate change threatens yak, a culture of grazing in India’s Equipment Climate News star-news.press/wp

With her one -year -old son tied on her back, Tsering Dolma is guided by ten yax to coral with stone walls while dusk settles on the Stark Stark mountains in the isolated Ladakh area in India.

Through the vast plains and winds that have winds where the scattered grass is transmitted to the slopes of the roll and rock peaks, only a handful of shepherds who tend to live.

For generations, shepherds, such as Dolla, relied on the melting of the mountain snow to feed the pastures on the height where their animals are grazing. But now, shepherds have stated that rainfall patterns have been unpredictable, which reduces the grass available to see them.

“Earlier, he was on snow and rain, but now he decreased a lot,” says 32 -year -old. “Even winter increases the warmth of before.”

In Ladakh, an area near Tibet that was once formed part of the old silk road, women deal primarily with grazing, pads and wool collection – action that is still largely manual.

In a nearby Valley, the 73 -year -old Conezias Dyne prepares yak milk tea and loses yak butter while simultaneously spinning her Buddhist prayers with her right hand.

It has nothing to do with Tsering Dolma, and she has devoted her life to work with Yaks, and she spent countless hours to create milk products and formulate blankets from their wool.

“We wake up early in the morning, around 5 am every day,” she says. “My husband and I yak’s milk and do all other business -related works until lunch. Then we take a break and go back to work in the evening. We have done it throughout our lives.”

The traditional lifestyle now faces dual threats: climate change, which makes an increasingly unworthy entry for Lix, and young generations that follow alternative livelihoods.

The high temperatures and irregular rains have made nourishing plants scarce while exposing the cold -to -borne shagatic animals to more physical stress. Research indicates that the average temperature in Ladakh has increased by 3 ° C (5.4 ° F) over four decades, with more extreme heat waves and irreplaceable rainfall patterns.

While measuring the effect of climate change specifically on Yak residents is still difficult, scientists believe that they contribute greatly to their decline. Government data shows that the residents of Ladak Yak decreased from approximately 34,000 in 2012 to less than 20,000 by 2019, the last year with the available statistics.

Although millions of yak are still present globally, scientists warn that the ecological system in Himalayas in this region is especially vulnerable to global warming.