Human Impact

Human Impact

According to the World Wildlife Fund, the temperate grasslands in Mongolia are listed as endangered or critical. Like many of the grasslands around the world, the Mongolian grasslands are under a high risk of degradation due in part to human activity. While most of Mongolia is characterized as being undeveloped and rural, increases in population have caused parts of Mongolia to begin to develop rapidly. The recent developments have had some detrimental impacts on the ecosystem by creating fragmented landscapes as well as by promoting destructive herding practices (Nature). Although development has produced some degradation to grassland, the human activity that has had the greatest impact on this eco-region is overgrazing by livestock.

Living a nomadic lifestyle as well as herding cattle has been an integral part of the cultural Mongolian identity. In fact, it has been observed that a substantial amount of Mongolians are parting from urban lifestyles in favor of the traditional rural ones. In light of recent economic trends within the region, “the number of herdsmen in Mongolia is reported to have tripled in the past decade to more than 450,000 while the number of livestock has increased by 30 percent” (WWF). Thus, many people benefit from these grasslands and depend on them for survival. However, this increasing surge of cattle has led to drastic amounts of overgrazing which has initiated mass amounts of grassland degradation. Additionally, several pieces of legislation, which are in effect in Inner Mongolia, have promoted an increase in herding cattle and have created a tragedy of the commons (Li et al.). In an essence, a tragedy of the commons refers to the unsustainable consumption of a resource that belongs to the ‘commons’. Currently, the people in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia are taking advantage of the public grasslands and abusing these resources by allowing their cattle graze in an unsustainable fashion.