美国国家公共电台 NPR How Your Cashmere Sweater Is Decimating Mongolia's Grasslands

How Your Cashmere Sweater Is Decimating Mongolia's Grasslands²

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: 

This next story takes us back to the source, the source of cashmere sweaters - like one you might get for Christmas. Hope I didn't spoil the surprise. Cashmere sweaters are soft and warm and have a side effect, destroying grasslands in Mongolia. Here's NPR's Rob Schmitz.

(SOUNDBITE OF MILKING COW)

ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE³: Lkhagvajav Bish has milked cows for decades. She's a nomadic⁴ herder. And she follows them in their endless search for grass. Today she and her son's ger, or tent, is in a valley surrounded by brown hills whose tops are white with frost. Bish is 90 years old, old enough to remember a time when this valley looked completely different.

LKHAGVAJAV BISH: (Through interpreter) We've been wintering in this valley for 30 years. Back then, the grass came up to my chest. It grew so tall that we had to use a sickle⁵ and horse-drawn equipment to cut through it. But the grass of my time is gone. There's no longer enough to feed the animals.

SCMITZ: The culprits behind the sad state of the valley stand innocently grazing beyond Bish and her cows.

(SOUNDBITE OF GOAT BLEATING)

SCMITZ: Cashmere goats - their sharp hooves cut through the soil surface. And their eating habits, voraciously⁶ ripping up plants by their root systems, make it impossible for grass to thrive. But thriving isn't a problem for the goats.

BISH: (Through interpreter) Goats reproduce faster than all my other animals, even faster than my sheep. Not too long ago, I used to have 20 of them. Now I've got 150. I don't want that many. They're just taking over.

(SOUNDBITE OF GOAT BLEATING)

SCMITZ: Thirty years ago, when the grass grew tall, cashmere goats made up 19 percent of all livestock⁷ in Mongolia. It's 60 percent today. And that's not just because goats are eager breeders. This is about money. China, Mongolia's biggest trading partner, has strict controls on importing meat and milk from Mongolian sheep and cows but not on cashmere.

Mongolia produces a third of the global supply. And the rise of China's consumer class has meant the price of cashmere has risen by more than 60 percent. Now Mongolia's more than a million nomadic herders have turned to goats to make a living, destroying their own grasslands in the process.

BULGAMAA DENSAMBUU: Today Mongolian rangeland is at a crossroads.

SCMITZ: Bulgamaa Densambuu is a researcher for the Swiss-funded Green Gold project. It focuses on preventing overgrazing of Mongolian grasslands, what Densambuu calls rangelands. She recently completed a survey that found 65 percent of Mongolia's grasslands have been degraded due to overgrazing of cashmere goats and to climate change. But Densambuu hasn't lost hope.

DENSAMBUU: Ninety percent of these total degraded rangelands can be recovered naturally within 10 years if we can keep existing management.

SCMITZ: And that's why Densambuu and other groups are working with herders to come up with viable⁸ solutions. Gankhuyag Nyam-Ochir directs the Mongolian Association of Pastureland User Groups. He represents a third of all nomadic herders in Mongolia. He says the trick is to supplement herders' income from cashmere goats with something else. He's thinking yaks¹⁰ or camels.

GANKHUYAG NYAM-OCHIR: (Through interpreter) Yak⁹ wool and the hair from a baby camel have fibers¹¹ that are just as fine as the wool from a cashmere goat.

SCMITZ: Nyam-Ochir is convincing his herders to trade in their goats for camels, which are much easier on the land.

NYAM-OCHIR: (Foreign language spoken).

SCMITZ: He says if herders don't start to get rid of their goats now, Mongolia's grasslands are doomed¹².

(SOUNDBITE OF GOAT BLEATING)

SCMITZ: But try telling that to Lkhagvajav Bish, the 90-year-old herder.

BISH: (Through interpreter) Yes, I know my goats are harmful to our grassland¹. And the more we have, the worse our land becomes. I get that. But this is how we earn our money.

SCMITZ: Bish prepares a pot of salty milk tea inside her ger while her goats graze outside. She says there is so little grass left that she's had to buy supplemental grains to feed her livestock. Otherwise, they'd die. But not the goats, she says. They seem to live through anything.

BISH: (Foreign language spoken).

SCMITZ: Bish says she doesn't know what the answer is. She says she feels helpless. "All I can do," she tells me, "is watch my grassland disappear." Rob Schmitz, NPR News, rural Mongolia.

1 grassland   

n.牧场，草地，草原

参考例句：

• There is a reach of grassland in the distance.远处是连绵一片的草原。
• The snowstorm swept the vast expanse of grassland.暴风雪袭击了辽阔的草原。

2 grasslands   

n.草原，牧场( grassland的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Songs were heard ringing loud and clear over the grasslands. 草原上扬起清亮激越的歌声。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Grasslands have been broken and planted to wheat. 草原已经开垦出来，种上了小麦。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 nomadic   

adj.流浪的；游牧的

参考例句：

• This tribe still live a nomadic life.这个民族仍然过着游牧生活。
• The plowing culture and the nomadic culture are two traditional principal cultures in China.农耕文化与游牧文化是我国传统的两大主体文化。

5 sickle   

n.镰刀

参考例句：

• The gardener was swishing off the tops of weeds with a sickle.园丁正在用镰刀嗖嗖地割掉杂草的顶端。
• There is a picture of the sickle on the flag. 旗帜上有镰刀的图案。

6 voraciously   

adv.贪婪地

参考例句：

• The bears feed voraciously in summer and store energy as fat. 熊在夏季吃很多东西，以脂肪形式储存能量。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 livestock   

n.家畜，牲畜

参考例句：

• Both men and livestock are flourishing.人畜两旺。
• The heavy rains and flooding killed scores of livestock.暴雨和大水淹死了许多牲口。

8 viable   

adj.可行的，切实可行的，能活下去的

参考例句：

• The scheme is economically viable.这个计划从经济效益来看是可行的。
• The economy of the country is not viable.这个国家经济是难以维持的。

9 yak   

n.牦牛

参考例句：

• The most common materials Tibetan jewelry are Yak bone.藏饰最常见的材料当属牦牛骨。
• We can sell yak skin,meat and wool.我们可以卖牦牛的皮、肉和毛。

10 yaks   

牦牛( yak的名词复数 )； 笑话

参考例句：

• The jokes get yaks. 那笑话引人发笑。
• Social species including birds, fish and yaks must have companionship. 习惯群居的生物，包括鸟类、鱼类和（牛毛）牛必须有伙伴。

11 fibers   

光纤( fiber的名词复数 )； （织物的）质地； 纤维，纤维物质

参考例句：

• Thesolution of collagen-PVA was wet spined with the sodium sulfate as coagulant and collagen-PVA composite fibers were prepared. 在此基础上，以硫酸钠为凝固剂，对胶原-PVA共混溶液进行湿法纺丝，制备了胶原-PVA复合纤维。
• Sympathetic fibers are distributed to all regions of the heart. 交感神经纤维分布于心脏的所有部分。

12 doomed   

命定的

参考例句：

• The court doomed the accused to a long term of imprisonment. 法庭判处被告长期监禁。
• A country ruled by an iron hand is doomed to suffer. 被铁腕人物统治的国家定会遭受不幸的。