In a country where livestock outnumber people by an order of 16 to one, animal welfare is no small matter. In Mongolia this year the animals are not faring well at all, and the 2.8m human inhabitants are feeling their pain. Hundreds of thousands of Mongolians depend directly upon animals for their own livelihood.

The immediate cause of everyone’s distress is an untoward sequence of weather events. A bone-dry summer last year was followed by a winter of unusually high wind, low temperatures and heavy snow cover. This combination has meant the country’s yaks, cattle, horses, camels, goats and sheep have gone long months without grazing adequately. The dreaded zud, as Mongolians call this phenomenon, is nothing new. In recent memory it struck three years in a row, starting in 2000—but the damage from this year’s zud is proving to be the worst in decades.