Ulaanbaatar
Second National Forum on Rangeland takes place
Environment
Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The Second National Forum
on Rangeland of Mongolia reported that the monitoring on pastureland being made in over 1500
sites of Mongolia shows 42 percent of land is not overgrazed, 13.5 percent is
in low level of overgrazing, 21.8 percent is in middle-level, 12.8 percent is
heavily overgrazed and 10.3 percent is overgrazed without recovering.
In total 84.6 million head of livestock is passing the autumn on the rangeland by receiving nearly 18 million newborn young animals. It is important to use grassland properly and keep the number of livestock in line with grazing capacity. Therefore, issues on the Law on Pastureland are being addressed at all levels including herders, NGOs and non-governmental organizations which run operation related to rangeland and at the level of decision-making.
The main concept of the bill on law is to collect tax
on pastureland use and to give the rights of collecting and spending the duty
to the local authorities. By doing so, the income from the duty could be spent
for improving livestock breeding, boring well in the soums and improving and
protecting the grassland. Formulation of the bill was completed and it will be
discussed at the Cabinet meeting and submitted to the Parliament during the
autumn session. Herders’ initiation and aspiration is important to adopt the
law. By protecting the pastureland can lead to improvement in production
quality of animal husbandry, restricting pastureland degradation, introducing
proper usage and further to become competent at global market with animal
products of Mongolia, stated Minister B.Batzorig in his opening remarks at the forum
which kicked off yesterday.
During the forum, the report on the current state of rangeland of Mongolia was presented. According to the national report, rate of rangeland in the territory was decreased from 65 percent to 57 percent. Moreover, the pastureland has been heavily degraded and desertification has been increased. The pastureland degradation is considered running relatively constantly and with a bit slower pace. On the one hand it is related to high capacity of rehabilitation of pastureland of Mongolia. On the other hand, it is considered as result of collaborative efforts of herders for using pastureland properly in recent years. Regarding the pastureland state, 51 percent of total pastureland have relatively remained the same while 15 percent have been revived. According to the degradation rate, 57 percent of total pastureland has been degraded as of 2016.
