Mongolian Matters » environment

250,000 Mongolian Gazelles

khuushuur — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:24:11 +0000

Vaste Numbers of Mongolian Gazelles

Good Old Kirk has seen them all:

In September 2007, Olson’s team were driving across the eastern Mongolian steppes studying the habitat of the Mongolian gazelle, one of the last nomadic ungulates to survive in large numbers.

Together with scientists at the Smithsonian Institute, they had been capturing gazelles and fitting them with GPS collars to track their movements, trying to work out where they travel and why.

As they drove east they began to encounter herds of a couple of thousand individuals.

“Groups of this size are impressive and beautiful to see,” describes Olson. Then the following day, at about midday, they drove to a hillside offering a great view of what appeared to be one such herd.

“But it was really one edge of a group that ended up being over 250,000 by one estimate.

“We were simply amazed at the sight. The image I have in my mind of seeing this massive aggregation of gazelles will always be etched into my memory.”

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Crop Circles Without Mistery – Yin Yang in Selenge

khuushuur — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:39:49 +0000

Yin Yang in Selenge Fields ptomotes rapeseed and alternative fuels

Jeroen Nooter send us a picture of the project he has been working. He has been traveling a couple of times from western european clay towards the Mongolian steppes on vehicles that ran on nothing but vegeatable oil and a smile.

Now he succesfully completed a Crop Circle of his own. With farmer Chuluun he created a Yin Yang by a combination of rapeseed and wheat in his efforts to have people think in different ways about crops and how to manage Mother Earth.

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Giving Garbage

khuushuur — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 09:22:00 +0000

National Park Ticket

It is always rather pretentious to make fun of other one’s language abilities, especially because i lack in them considerably in myself. But sometimes things are just funny enough to pass them on.
This picture here is the backside of the entrance ticket to a National Park, the Terelj Park in this case. It conveniently gives a list of services provided to visitors in the park. Most interesting is point 3, where it says the park is….

To provide with information, brochure booklets, warning and garbage

When we enlightened our loyal driver on the issue, he ousted one of his high shrieking laughs, opened his window again and shouted at his friend the national park ranger while pointing at the ticket: “It says: We give you garbage!”

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technorati: mongolia

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Lost dinosaur egg shows up

khuushuur — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 02:09:00 +0000

UB Post reports that the dinosaur egg that was stolen from the Natural History Museum might have been found.
The costums simply found it in a bag in the trunk of a car. Quite a goose egg for the robbers.

A collection of round-shaped, rough-surfaced eggs of an unidentified dinosaur

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technorati: mongolia

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Article: Byambajav reclaims sacred lands

khuushuur — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 07:31:00 +0000

Byambajav reclaims sacred lands
http://www.un.org/works/sustainable/byambajav_story.html

Bogh Khan, a Mongolian mountain, rises within one of the world’s oldest nature preserves. Home to the Manchi monastery, it is a sacred place to local Buddhists. Such reverence did little to protect the mountain in the 1930s, when Stalinist forces destroyed the monastery. But Lama Byambajav hopes that Bogh Khan’s spiritual significance will guard it against the new danger that threatens the mountain today – environmental degradation.

Since 2000, Byambajav has been at the center of a movement to encourage environmental preservation in Mongolia by reviving the traditional Buddhist reverence for nature. Working with the World Bank, World Wildlife Fund, and the Alliance for Religions and Conservation, Byambajav is trying to resurrect a centuries-old custom of preserving the natural landscapes that encompass sites considered sacred in local Buddhist tradition. As the leader of a Buddhist university in Mongolia, Byambajav is part of the Sacred Gifts to the Living Planet Campaign, a partnership between the World Bank and the Buddhist community that seeks to identify and protect these sacred places.

“It is sacred duty of ours, no matter of what religion we belong, to protect and hand over to next generation this untouched nature of Mongolia,” Byambajav says.

By identifying sacred sites throughout the country and re-introducing them to the local populace, the Sacred Gifts program hopes to create strong moral and religious support for environmental protection and enforcement measures. In his post as university president, Byambajav educates monks from monasteries throughout Mongolia about the importance of environmental awareness and teaches them conservation methods that they can bring back with them to their home communities.

“He is interested in environmental conservation not for economic reasons, but because it is the right thing to do. It’s the moral thing to do,” said Tony Whitten, a biodiversity specialist at the World Bank who has spearheaded the program.

Byambajav was part of a group formed to identify Mongolia’s sacred sites. The group compiled a nationwide list by writing to the country’s district governors, monks and academics and asking them to provide the names and
locations of their own local sites. The list currently includes about 600 sacred places, mostly mountains, forests, trees and springs. Maps and descriptions of these sites were published earlier this year in a booklet with forwards written by the prime minister of Mongolia and the president of the World Bank.

From among the 600 sites, the group selected five in which to begin pilot conservation programs. The five sites represent a diversity of natural zones and regions: Mazshir monastery in the central region, Amarbayasgalant monastery in the north, Baldan Breeven monastery in the east, Suvarga Hairhan mountain in the Hangai region and Zuun Choir monastery in southeastern Mongolia.

At each location, the group installed stone tablets identifying the sacred site. Representatives of the Sacred Gifts programme held educational sessions with monks from local monasteries, who joined with other people from the community in cleaning up the surrounding areas. As a result of this local commitment to the revival of these sacred sites, the traditional bans on hunting and logging have been successfully re-introduced.

The interaction between the group and the local monasteries has revealed that each of these sacred sites faces its own environmental threats. The monks at the Amarbayasgalant monastery in Selenge province told the group
that discarded plastic bottles were the biggest problem in their region. The monks already have started collecting these bottles and they are trying to educate the community about the need to properly discard them. The group now is now seeking a local recycling scheme and pricing the transportation of the bottles to the nearest facility, if no local option exists.

The entire Sacred Sites project thus far has cost roughly $70,000 – funded mainly through the World Bank – and the group hopes to extend the pilot program to other parts of the country suffering from environmental degradation. Some of the new sacred sites might encompass gold-mining operations in central and northern Mongolia. By re-introducing the worshipping traditions, local communities might be able to pressure mining companies who are not complying with requirements for environmental protection and restoration.

The program also could evolve into an entirely new initiative: spiritual tourism. Manchir monastery on Bogh Khan mountain could become a retreat center led by the Buddhist community. “It would be a spiritual, conservation-oriented tourism,” Whitten says.

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UNESCO World Heritage Sites for Mongolia

khuushuur — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 07:19:00 +0000

An overview of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Mongolia: The Orkhon Valley and Uvs Nuur basin.

The Orkhon Valley

The 121,967-ha Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape encompasses an extensive area of pastureland on both banks of the Orkhon River and includes numerous archaeological remains dating back to the 6th century. The site also includes Kharkhorum, the 13th and 14th century capital of Chingis (Genghis) Khan’s vast Empire. Collectively the remains in the site reflect the symbiotic links between nomadic, pastoral societies and their administrative and religious centres, and the importance of the Orkhon valley in the history of central Asia. The grassland is still grazed by Mongolian nomadic pastoralists.
Justification for Inscription

Criterion (ii): The Orkhon valley clearly demonstrates how a strong and persistent nomadic culture, led to the development of extensive trade networks and the creation of large administrative, commercial, military and religious centres. The empires that these urban centres supported undoubtedly influenced societies across Asia and into Europe and in turn absorbed influence from both east and west in a true interchange of human values.

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Criterion (iii): Underpinning all the development within the Orkhon valley for the past two millennia has been a strong culture of nomadic pastoralism. This culture is still a revered and indeed central part of Mongolian society and is highly respected as a ‘noble’ way to live in harmony with the landscape.

Criterion (iv): The Orkhon valley is an outstanding example of a valley that illustrates several significant stages in human history. First and foremost it was the centre of the Mongolian Empire; secondly it reflects a particular Mongolian variation of Turkish power; thirdly, the Tuvkhun hermitage monastery was the setting for the development of a Mongolian form of Buddhism; and fourthly, Khar Balgas, reflects the Uighur urban culture in the capital of the Uighur Empire.

Uvs Nuur basin

The Uvs Nuur Basin (1,068,853 ha), is the northernmost of the enclosed basins of Central Asia. It takes its name from Uvs Nuur Lake, a large, shallow and very saline lake, important for migrating birds, waterfowl and seabirds. The site is made up of twelve protected areas representing the major biomes of eastern Eurasia. The steppe ecosystem supports a rich diversity of birds and the desert is home to a number of rare gerbil, jerboas and the marbled polecat. The mountains are an important refuge for the globally endangered snow leopard, mountain sheep (argali) and the Asiatic ibex.
Justification for Inscription

Criterion (ii): The closed salt lake system of Uvs Nuur is of international scientific importance because of its climatic and hydrological regimes. Because of the unchanging nature of the nomadic pastoral use of the grasslands within the basin over thousands of years, current research programmes should be able to unravel the rate at which Uvs Nuur (and other smaller lakes within the basin) have become saline (and eutrophic). These processes are on-going and because of its unique geophysical and biological characteristics, the basin has been chosen as an IGBP site for monitoring global warming. Criterion (iv): The Uvs Nuur site has a large range of ecosystems, representing the major biomes of eastern Eurasia, with a number of endemic plants. Although the basin is inhabited and has been used for nomadic pastoralism for thousands of years, the mountains, forests, steppes and deserts are extremely important habitats for a wide range of wild animals, many of them threatened or endangered. The steppe ecosystem supports a rich diversity of birds and the deserts a number of rare gerbil, jerboas and the marbled polecat. The mountains at the western end of the basin are important refuges for the globally threatened snow leopard, mountain sheep (argali) and the Asiatic ibex. Uvs Nuur itself is an important habitat for waterfowl as well as for birds migrating south from Siberia.

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Northern Buddhist Conference on Ecology and Development

khuushuur — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 12:42:00 +0000

See for more informoration the official website of the Northern Buddhist Conference on Ecology and Development.

As the sound of chanting spread across a room full of several hundred Buddhist monks in Ulan Baator this morning, the newly elected President of Mongolia launched a unique event.

The occasion was the launch of the Northern Buddhist Conference on Ecology and Development.

The meeting was historic for two key reasons. It was the first conference bringing together the Buddhist monasteries in Mongolia since 1911. It is also the first body to broker partnerships between Buddhist communities, Northern Buddhist governments, the World Bank and other international bodies.

Joining leading Buddhists from Russia, Mongolia, China, Korea, and Cambodia were senior figures from the World Bank, Dutch Government, international environmental organizations such as WWF, and the Alliance of Religions and Conservation.

President Elect His Excellency Nambar Enkhbayar – who is also ARC’s International President – heralded the meeting as “a moment that Buddhism could begin to take its rightful place in civil society in Asia.”

Teresa Serra, Director for Environment and Social Development of the World Bank, spoke of the recent interest of the World Bank in working with religions. She also, most importantly, expressed the Bank’s firm commitment to continue to develop this aspect of its community based programmes.

In a powerful presentation, the Vice President of the China Buddhist Association, the world’s largest national Buddhist group, spoke about the need for Buddhists to once again help locate the philosophy and beliefs of compassionate protection of nature which: “for centuries has protected the environment of China and Mongolia.”

This was reflected in the speech of the Minister for the Environment of Mongolia who drew attention to: “the vital moral, ethical, practical and spiritual need for myths and legends which help us understand our interrelationship with all aspect of creation.”

In a day packed with practical project outlines, such as Russian Buddhists working actively with ecologists to combat erosion, and the idea of Mongolians adopting a new custom of planting a tree in the Gobi to commemorate each person who has died, the potential for Buddhism to help create a more ecological world was clear.

“We hope this is the beginning of many more practical partnerships in this region,” said Martin Palmer, Secretary General of ARC. “In the past ten years we have already done some very successful work with Buddhists, the World Bank, WWF and governments.” He cited the reintroduction of sacred ecological texts to encourage Mongolian Buddhists to protect their landscape, and the work in the Buddhist sacred mountains of China. “These, and other projects, have shown it is possible to work together to make real changes. The Northern Asian Buddhist network has a very exciting future.”

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