Mongolia: pastoral nomadic livestock husbundry's record growth and ecological challenge
Contemporary Mongolia is a unique, wonderful country, where thousand years old traditions of the pastoral nomadic livestock husbandry and nomadic civilization are actually coexisting, intertwining and interacting with the achievements of the modern, industrialized and globalizing world. Just recently, a hundred years ago in the early XX century 90% of the Mongolia’s population were engaged in the only nomadic livestock husbandry and leaded nomadic life. At present time more than 70% of Mongolia’s total population are employed in the industry, construction, transportation, telecommunication, management, education, health, services and other activities and live sedentary life in cities and towns, meanwhile the rest about 1/3 part of the economically active population is employed in the gradually modernizing pastoral nomadic animal husbandry. Nevertheless the mining industry has become the main driver of the Mongolia’s economic growth traditional pastoral nomadic livestock husbandry still remains a basic, vital sector of the economy and subsistance of the people. The author has examined the main changes in the traditional pastoral nomadic livestock husbandry in the contemporary Mongolia after transition from the previous socialist model of development to the western democracy and market economy in 1990- 2017, as well as the role of the branch in the national economy, output of main agricultural products, internal and external factors of livestock record fast growth in the last years (2011-2017), the challenges of the imbalance between the number of livestock and the capacity of natural pastures, the threat of ecological degradation.