TSAGAANNUUR, Mongolia — Erdenebat Chuluu, a nomadic herder, shouts words of encouragement to the reindeer he is riding.“Chu!, Chu!,” he calls, as he urges the animal out of a cedar wood and onto a plain in the southern reaches of the Mongolian Taiga, a predominantly forested area some 200 km from the nearest paved road.Once in the open, the beast and its rider gingerly step over fallen trees and navigate creeks of melted snow, seemingly oblivious to a late winter chill.Chuluu has lived all his life in the centuries-old tradition of his Dukha ancestors, renowned for their reindeer-herding and hunter-gathering skills in the forests of the rugged Sayan Mountains straddling the Russian border.But the Dukha fear they are losing their identity in the face of a conservation order by the government that bans unlicensed hunting on most of their traditional land.(Click https://reut.rs/2KHuORW to see a package of pictures.)Reindeer outdo horses in this steep and snowy terrain and have allowed the Dukha to evade many of the upheavals that have historically afflicted people in the lowlands, from Genghis Khan to Communism.Chuluu’s people, around 280 of them, are spread out across 59 households, about a day’s ride from the village of Tsagaannuur.“It’s our will to maintain the tradition of herding the reindeer in the same way as our ancestors did,” Chuluu told Reuters in April.In 2012, Mongolia’s government designated the majority of the Dukha’s traditional herding grounds as part of a national park in an attempt to protect an eco-system ravaged in the preceding couple of decades.During that period, a Soviet-era quota system for hunting, which had provided a living for people like the Dukha and maintained wildlife numbers, broke down.
Mongolia’s Reindeer Herders Fear Lost Identity Under Hunting Ban
By Thomas Peter and Natalie Thomas, Reuters, The Gazette (Cedar Rapids)
Mon, 05/21/2018 - 3:41pm
Sections: u.s.
Topics: Iowa Linn County Cedar Rapids
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