The Tsaatan are an indigenous tribe among the smallest ethnic minorities in the world, considered the last nomadic reindeer herders. Over the last century, this tribe has suffered the impact of climate change, putting their culture and descendants at risk. Not only that, but they’re also facing the conservation policies of the Mongolian government.
Who are the Tsaatan?
The Tsaatan people are settled in camps located near Siberia. They live in tepees and are known for herding and traveling with their reindeer through the boreal forest. The Tsaatan live far from roads, sharing the forest with Siberian mountain goats, argali sheep, red deers, and endangered musk deers.
When Stalin gained power in, what was then, the Soviet Union, many Tsaatan on the Soviet side of the border fled to Mongolia to avoid being forcibly settled. Although it was a measure to keep their lifestyle, this also isolated them from much of their traditional homeland. Until 1960 the Tsaatan were people not recognized by the government as legal residents of Mongolia. When they were finally granted citizenship, some began to settle while others kept migrating with their reindeer. Some of the nomads supplemented their income by working for the Mongolian government, hunting animals to export their skins.
The demise of the Soviet Union in 1990, and the transition from communism in Mongolia to a market economy, prompted instability throughout the country. Miners began exploiting the region for gold, jade, and uranium, contributing to an increase in wildlife poaching and the degradation of the high alpine meadows, mountains, and streams that the Tsaatan depend on and consider sacred. In the boreal forest, the struggle for survival led to an increase in poaching; as the economy began to recover in the 2000s, the government struggled to develop conservation policies that could protect both natural and human communities.
In response to a request from the Tsaatan, in 2011 the Mongolian government established a Special Protected Area and canceled the 44 mining licenses in the region. But the government also went further: concerned about poaching and habitat loss, it also banned hunting and fishing, and excluded reindeer from most of the area. Today, about 250 Tsaatan herd about 2,000 reindeer. But instead of eating their reindeer, as other reindeer herders do, the Tsaatan milk them, ride them and use them as pack animals, using their meat as food only on extreme occasions of famine.
Threats to the reindeer people
Climate change is perhaps the best-known threat to Mongolia’s nomadic cultures. Over the past seven decades, the average temperatures in the country have risen more than twice the global average. This warming has intensified both summer droughts and extreme winter conditions, contributing to waves of nomadic herders abandoning their herds and moving to the capital city of Ulaanbataar. In recent decades, the city has had to deal with the arrival of more than 600,000 migrants. A mining boom has stimulated Mongolia’s economy and provided jobs for some of the former nomads, but it has also worsened carbon pollution, urban migration, and pressure on ecosystems. The Tsaatan are concerned about climate change and mining but believe that misguided conservation policies are the most serious threat to their culture.
Restrictions on access to pasture have had an even greater impact. Instead of frequent seasonal migrations, nomads are now only allowed to do them four times, leading to overgrazing and poorer reindeer health. Community members have also complained about how local rangers enforced the Special Protected Area regulations: tracking their movements with cameras, fining them, forcing them to travel for days to the village to ask permission to move their herds, and jailing anyone caught hunting.
Sustaining Mongolia’s nomadic reindeer herders while protecting endangered wildlife requires the government to reconsider conservation policies that exclude human communities and livelihoods from protected areas. Reindeer have been central to northern cultures for millennia. Today they also help slow climate change because their grazing reduces the dark ground cover that absorbs heat during the winter.
The Mongolian government is working hard to protect endangered wildlife, but the Tsaatan nomads insist that their reindeer culture is equally endangered and important. They and their reindeer can help sustain the boreal forest and the global climate. Meanwhile, the few who remain pass on their beliefs from generation to generation, invoking their deceased ancestors in song.
Translated by María Isabel Carrasco Cara Chards
Photos from: Pinterest @John Church / People & Places / David Vilanova
