![]() ![]() There were few fences those that we noticed were near the city or tourist camps, where gers, or Mongolian yurts, used them to keep livestock out and provide privacy. We saw sheep sheared in pens, and, while on the road, large trucks bulging with wool. The herds also often contained small horses, sometimes mounted by herders. This livestock was smaller than North American livestock. The livestock herds typically had a mix of cows, sheep and goats. We saw some agriculture on the hillsides, but most of the land was used for livestock, as the overgrazed terrain suggested. This, and the incised stream beds from the flashy runoff generated from the steppe, are signs of overgrazing. ![]() I likened it to a gigantic golf course-just the fairway and greens, not the ‘rough’. It was heavily grazed, the grass itself only a few inches high. We bounced along rough tracks in the steppe and splashed through muddy puddles. During our eighteen-hour drive, our guide, Purevdorj Surenkhorloo from WWF Mongolia, nicknamed Puje, kept us on paved highways for about four hours. When we got back on the road we didn’t stay there long. The Tuul River downstream of Ulaanbaatar shows signs of eutrophication. There was some litter, primarily vodka bottles, as well. Algal mats alongside the river banks demonstrated river eutrophication, or when an overabundance of nutrients create algal blooms, which in turn strip the river of its oxygen and block sunlight from the river bottom. Cattle wandered around the flood plain, and we could see tufts of wool from sheep that had grazed recently. we made a stop at a bridge over the Tuul River to inspect it. By the time we reached the countryside, we could see a row of houses that had been constructed specifically for the heads of state who attended the Mongolia-hosted 2016 Asia-Europe Meeting. ![]() On our way, we passed out of the commercial downtown district of Ulaanbaatar, through the residential district with Soviet-built high-rise apartment buildings, and then into a commercial district with construction companies, scrap metal yards and light industry. On the second day of field trips before our Tuul River report card workshop, we headed downstream to visit two mines: one recently built with a history of environmental protections, the other an old soviet mine with no apparent environmental regulation. ![]()
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