The World Yak Herders Association
Yurta Association promotes partnerships and conservation of biocultural diversity in High Asia. Cultural anthropologist Mr Carralero is working with a range of partners in High Asia to establish a ‘World Yak Herders Association’. Partnering organizations include Mountain Partnership, University of Central Asia, Kegawa Herders Cooperative and Plateau Perspectives.
“Rural communities from High Asia are among the most vulnerable peoples in the world. At such as high altitude the main activities go around pastoralism, where yak keeps a prominent position as a native grazing animal from the alpine tundra ecosystem. But, traditional yak mobile husbandry is declining in all the countries where is to be found due to different causes, in spite of being connatural to the high-altitude grasslands of Central Asia, and its proven benefits: the high quality of the milk, meat and wool hair produced there, and what is much more important, its decisive contribution to restrain the soil desertification and the glacier melting processes on the crucial environment of High Asia, from which almost half of the World´s population depend to obtain water resources for the urban and farming settlements. To correct this wrong dynamics, the communities engaged on traditional yak-herding practices require a programme of urgent global protection, and the creation of a global network of indigenous producers and further projects to empower this network represent decisive steps onwards to achieve it.”
Santiago Carralero
For further information:
- The world of Yak pastoralism
- Alpine ecosystem and protected areas in yak herding areas
- The bio-cultural diversity in yak herding regions of High Asia
- Short documentary: The last yak herder of Dhe (WWF Nepal)
