Climate change threatens yaks, herding culture in India’s Ladakh

With her one-year-old son strapped to her back, Tsering Dolma guides a dozen yaks into a stone-walled corral as dusk settles over the stark mountains of India’s isolated Ladakh region.

Across the vast, wind-swept plains where sparse grass transitions to gravelly foothills and craggy peaks, only a handful of herders tending their livestock break the solitude.

For generations, herders like Dolma have depended on mountain snowmelt to nourish the high-altitude pastures where their animals graze. But now, herders report that precipitation patterns have grown unpredictable, diminishing the grass available for their yaks.

“Earlier, it used to snow and rain, but now it has reduced a lot,” the 32-year-old says. “Even the winters are getting warmer than before.”

In Ladakh, a region near Tibet that once formed part of the ancient Silk Route, women primarily handle the herding, milking, and wool gathering – labour that remains largely manual.

In a neighbouring valley, 73-year-old Kunzias Dolma prepares yak milk tea and inspects her yak butter while simultaneously spinning her Buddhist prayer wheel with her right hand.

Unrelated to Tsering Dolma, she has dedicated her life to working with yaks, spending countless hours creating products from their milk and crafting blankets from their wool.

“We wake up early morning, about 5am every day,” she says. “My husband and I milk the yaks and do all of the other yak-related work until about lunch. Then we take a break and get back to work in the evening. We have been doing this all our life.”

This traditional lifestyle now faces dual threats: Climate change making Ladakh increasingly inhospitable for yaks, and younger generations pursuing alternative livelihoods.

Rising temperatures and irregular rainfall have made nutritious vegetation scarcer while subjecting the shaggy, cold-adapted animals to greater physical stress. Research indicates the average temperature in Ladakh has risen by 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) over four decades, with more extreme heatwaves and unpredictable precipitation patterns.

While precisely measuring climate change’s effect on yak populations remains challenging, scientists believe it contributes significantly to their decline. Government data show Ladakh’s yak population fell from nearly 34,000 in 2012 to fewer than 20,000 by 2019, the most recent year with available statistics.

Though millions of yaks still exist globally, scientists warn that the Himalayan ecosystem in this region is particularly vulnerable to global warming.