Nomadic Traditions, Horses, Snow Leopards, and Welfare Policy on the Steppe
Mongolia occupies a unique position in global animal welfare — a country where nomadic pastoralism remains a living tradition for nearly a third of the population, where horses are cultural symbols of national identity and economic utility simultaneously, and where climate change is driving a welfare crisis affecting both animals and the people who depend on them. This deep dive examines Mongolia's animal welfare landscape in detail: the nomadic herding system, horse culture and welfare, cashmere goat proliferation and its welfare consequences, snow leopard and wildlife welfare, urban animal challenges, and the country's nascent welfare policy framework.
Mongolia has approximately 70 million head of livestock — an extraordinary figure for a country of 3.3 million people. The "five snouts" of Mongolian herding — horses, cattle (including yaks), camels, sheep, and goats — are maintained by herder families who move seasonally across the steppe, desert, and mountain landscapes. This system has sustained Mongolian culture for millennia and represents one of the world's most distinctive human-animal relationships.
The dzud — a Mongolian winter disaster combining summer drought (which prevents adequate hay storage) with extreme cold — causes mass livestock mortality. Between 2009 and 2010, approximately 8 million animals died in a single dzud event. Climate change is making dzud events more frequent and severe. During dzud, animals die from cold, starvation, and exhaustion over periods of days to weeks — a massive welfare crisis that is simultaneously an economic catastrophe for herder families.
Horses are the symbolic core of Mongolian identity. Mongolian horses — small, hardy, and semi-feral — are revered in culture, religion, and daily life. Yet the welfare of these animals is shaped by very different values than those prevailing in Western equestrian culture.
Mongolian horses spend most of the year at liberty on the steppe, forming semi-wild herds under minimal human management. During summer, foals are roped and trained; racing occurs at the Naadam festival (the national holiday), where foals of 5–7 years are raced over distances of 15–30 kilometers ridden by child jockeys aged 7–13. The welfare implications of child jockey racing — both for the children and the horses — have attracted international attention.
Airag (fermented mare's milk) is a culturally central food and drink in Mongolia, consumed in large quantities during summer. Producing airag requires tethering foals away from their mothers to prevent nursing, then hand-milking mares multiple times daily. The welfare of separated foals — particularly those tethered in unfamiliar environments — and the physical demands on lactating mares are welfare concerns that receive no regulatory attention in Mongolia's traditional pastoral context.
Global demand for cashmere has driven a dramatic expansion of cashmere goat herds in Mongolia — from approximately 5 million in 1990 to over 27 million by 2020. This expansion has severely degraded Mongolian grasslands through overgrazing, creating a welfare feedback loop: degraded pasture means animals must travel farther for food, suffer nutritional stress, and face increased dzud vulnerability.
Cashmere goat herding families face an economic trap: the income from cashmere is essential, but maintaining herd numbers that maximize cashmere production simultaneously degrades the pasture that all livestock depend on. Without coordinated herder management of grazing pressure — difficult in the context of privatized herding following the 1990 transition from collectivism — this dynamic is hard to break.
Mongolia hosts an estimated 1,000–1,500 snow leopards in the Altai, Khangai, and Khentii mountain ranges — one of the world's most important snow leopard populations. Conservation programs have intensified significantly, and welfare integration into conservation is increasingly standard.
Snow Leopard Trust Mongolia maintains an extensive camera trap network and GPS collar monitoring program. Collar fitting involves chemical immobilization — a source of acute capture stress with risk of complications from anesthesia in a cold, high-altitude environment. Welfare protocols for snow leopard capture in Mongolia have been developed with international veterinary partners, including pre-capture health screening, appropriate anesthetic combinations, and rapid recovery monitoring.
Snow leopards prey on herders' livestock — particularly in winter when wild prey is scarce. Retaliatory killing has historically been the primary threat to Mongolia's snow leopard population. Community livestock insurance programs, where herders receive compensation for snow leopard depredation losses, have significantly reduced retaliatory killing in participating communities. This represents both a conservation success and a welfare improvement — fewer snow leopards dying violently, less farmer-wildlife conflict stress for both parties.
Mongolia's Mongolian saiga population — a distinct subspecies — was reduced to fewer than 750 animals by 2012 through poaching for horns (used in TCM) and disease. Intensive protection efforts and a hunting moratorium have allowed partial recovery. Saigas face welfare challenges from mass mortality events driven by infectious disease (principally hemorrhagic septicemia) that can kill thousands within days. Climate-related vegetation stress may increase disease susceptibility.
Ulaanbaatar, home to nearly half of Mongolia's population, has significant stray dog populations and growing companion animal communities among middle-class residents. Stray dog management has historically involved culling, which welfare organizations have consistently opposed as ineffective and welfare-poor.
Mongolia's Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry has piloted sterilization programs in Ulaanbaatar with support from international animal welfare organizations including Humane Society International. Progress has been slow relative to the scale of the stray dog population, which is estimated at tens of thousands in the capital alone.
Mongolia enacted a Law on Animal Welfare in 2012 — one of the few Central Asian countries to have dedicated welfare legislation. The law prohibits cruelty and establishes basic welfare requirements for companion animals and livestock. Enforcement capacity is limited, and the law contains no specific provisions for nomadic herding welfare or wildlife welfare during conservation operations.
Climate change poses the most significant emerging welfare threat in Mongolia. Projections indicate:
Effective climate adaptation — early warning systems, hay reserves, mobile veterinary teams, herder insurance — simultaneously serves human livelihood protection and animal welfare. This alignment provides political traction for welfare-relevant climate adaptation investments.
Mongolia presents animal welfare in one of its most culturally distinctive forms — a society where human and animal lives are genuinely intertwined in a way largely absent from industrialized countries. The welfare challenges are real and severe — dzud mortality, Naadam racing risks, cashmere overgrazing, stray dog culling — but they exist within a cultural context that takes animals seriously as economic and spiritual partners, not merely as commodities. Welfare improvement in Mongolia is most likely through approaches that honor this cultural relationship while reducing the most avoidable suffering — climate-resilient herding support, humane racing standards, wildlife coexistence programs, and effective urban animal management. Mongolia's 2012 Animal Welfare Law provides the legislative foundation; what is needed is sustained investment in making it real.