- Traditional herders in Nepal’s alpine rangelands face climate change, rising costs, labor shortages, disease and limited markets for yak products.
- Warming temperatures are altering water cycles, vegetation and soil carbon, while drying wetlands and glacier changes increase fire risk and reduce grazing areas for both domestic and wild yaks.
- Wild yaks face threats from habitat shrinkage, crossbreeding with domestic yaks, overharvesting of food sources like yartsa gunbu and declining rangeland quality, which could undermine their genetic purity and survival.
KATHMANDU — In the rugged mountains of the Dolpo region in western Nepal, Youngdung Jhama Lama spent her childhood herding nagton (domesticated yaks) across the vast alpine pastures.
Two decades on, mobile herding has greatly changed. “We only have four yaks left now,” said the 24-year-old resident of Vijer (Tra) village in Nepal’s largest and remotest district, Dolpa.
For traditional herders such as Lama, rearing yaks (Bos grunniens), valued for transport, meat and wool, is becoming challenging due to rising costs, climate change, lack of local markets for yak produce, frequent spread of diseases and other socioeconomic pressures. This has not only increased challenges for domesticated yaks, but also for their wild cousins (Bos mutus).
“My family sold dozens of them in the neighboring Mustang district last fall because it was more labor-intensive and costly to rear them, and we had limited kharka (pastureland/rangeland) to graze them,” Lama said.
Many young people across the Himalayan rangelands are leaving for better opportunities in big cities or abroad, creating a shortage of labor. According to the National Population and Housing Census 2021 Internal Migration in Nepal report, in the country’s mountains, in-migration increased from 9,698 (2.2%) in 1971 to 75,542 (2.4%) in 2021, but excess out-migration resulted in a negative net migration of -543,966 by 2021.
According to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), climate change is affecting Himalayan high-altitude ecosystems used for grazing. It is altering how water circulates in these landscapes, changing the timing and availability of moisture.
These shifts affect vegetation and the amount of carbon stored in the soil as well as how quickly organic matter breaks down. At the same time, drying wetlands and peatlands are increasing the risk of fires, while some rangelands near glaciers face the threat of submergence due to glacial changes.
Meanwhile, herders say they now see a rising risk of disease spread among yaks. “The infections are lethal. We have to walk for days to fetch a veterinarian, and in case the yak dies, the insurance amount is too low for herders to reach the rural municipality office to claim it.” Although the link between disease spread and climate change isn’t established, researchers have found that increased heat and changes in climatic patterns could cause the replacement of their traditional food, “negatively affecting welfare, productivity, and performance, as is the increase in disease risk.”
With the closing of Morimla and Kato crossings on the Dolpa-China border post COVID-19, situations have worsened as herders had traveled these crossings for months to graze their yaks in rangelands and also sold cheese/wool beyond the border.
“After the closure, herders could not graze their yaks across the border, leading some of them to sell their yaks and raise cattle and goats instead. Unlike yaks, they graze all season, increasing the risk of overgrazing,” Lama said.
The demand side for products such as wool and cheese is also not encouraging, Lama said. “There are no local markets to sell the cheese and wool, and it’s costly to get them to big markets in Kathmandu or other districts,” Lama said.
These challenges are not limited to domesticated yaks; they are also affecting their wild counterparts, said Krishna Prasad Acharya, veterinarian officer at the Department of Livestock Services who has studied wild yaks in Himalayan regions in Nepal, drawing references from yak populations spread across the Tibetan Plateau, as both these Himalayan landscapes have a similar wild yak species.
Researchers say they believe the domestic and wild yaks genetically diverged between 1 million and 5 million years ago. The wild yak, characterized by its bulky body, is now considered a separate species from the domestic yak. Although there is no accurate data on the total number of wild yaks, estimates show fewer than 10,000 exist in the wild. However, researchers’ sightings of two individuals in Nepal’s most remote landscapes in Upper Humla predict the possibility of their existence in mountainous districts like Dolpa.
As rangelands degrade and shrink due to changes in moisture and availability of water, wild yaks’ grazing grounds could also shrink and overlap with the domesticated ones. This could possibly lead to crossbreeding, researchers say.
“Amid these existing impacts, the wild yaks that differ in size, behavior and habitat range face additional risk when they end up crossbreeding with the domestic ones,” Acharya told Mongabay.
“Because wild yaks are rare and carry a unique genetic makeup, the exchange through crossbreeding could threaten the genetic purity of wild yak populations.” Research shows crossbreeding also alters adaptive traits, challenging high-altitude survival while increasing species conservation risks.
For Youngdung’s father, Karma Rikjin Lama, dong (male and female wild yaks) have long grazed their landscapes, although the species has been quite rare to spot over the past two decades. While crossbreeding is viewed as a major threat to wild yaks, Rikjin said a few yak herders preferred to have their dri (domestic female yaks) crossbred with wild yaks in hopes of having a genetically stronger calf.
“The calves are physically stronger and resistant to diseases, unlike the domestic ones. But chances are that these calves get along with the wild herds and don’t prefer to be domesticated. It’s only beneficial for us if they choose to stay back,” Rikjin said.
However, the crossbreeding process is not desirable, said Naresh Kusi, a Ph.D. scholar at the University of Inland Norway who also researched wild yaks in Upper Humla.
When domestic yaks crossbred with wild ones a few years ago, he said, herders in Upper Humla had faced multiple challenges, as the calves were physically bigger and tougher for female yaks to birth. Some herders in the Limi Valley did not want to crossbreed in fear of losing their female yaks. “Given their genetic differences, the calves are more aggressive and difficult to tame by herders,” Kusi said.
For Lama, livestock that are easier to rear, such as sheep and goats, have recently grown as new competition in some areas.
To add to the climate stresses, human-induced changes are also taking a toll on yaks. “Wild yaks are aloof creatures and are rarely spotted in human-friendly landscapes, but traders overharvest yartsa gunbu [(Ophiocordyceps sinensis)], a prized fungus which also happens to be a major food source for wild yaks,” she told Mongabay.
This is when traditional herding feels important, Lama said. “We allow the yaks to graze based on our knowledge of rotational grazing and keep track of every change around our pasture/rangelands and overall environment.”
However, traditional herding has declined in mountain landscapes across the country due to degraded rangelands and diseases causing calf mortality, which has increased the cost for herders while eroding the traditional knowledge used to manage the rangeland ecosystem.
Acharya emphasized that conservation does not exist in isolation, and the role of the local community and herders is fundamental to knowledge preservation and wild yak conservation, although yaks barely capture the national and international limelight despite their significant roles in rangeland conservation.
Local community knowledge complements conservation efforts, but given multiple threats to the wild yak population, Kusi said conservation measures for keystone species like yaks should be adopted at the local and national levels.
The initiative could start with establishing a habitat refuge for wild yaks, which, according to him, could help maintain the rangeland ecosystem with seasonal yak herding and avoid possible conflicts by keeping the wild yaks away — for instance, within a fenced area — from crossbreeding with domestic herds.
“This could be one key solution in sight for wild yak conservation, given multiple threats for both the species,” Kusi told Mongabay.
Banner image: Youngdung with a yak calf in Vijer (Tra) village in Dolpo. Image by Youngdung Jhama Lama.
Nepal’s wild yaks ‘need more conservation than research’: Q&A with Naresh Kusi
Citations:
Sapkota, S., Acharya, K. P., Laven, R., & Acharya, N. (2022). Possible Consequences of Climate Change on Survival, Productivity and Reproductive Performance, and Welfare of Himalayan Yak (Bos grunniens). Veterinary Sciences, 9(8), 449. https://doi.org/10.3390/vetsci9080449
Rai, I. M., Joshi, L., Rai, D. R., Rai, D. M. (2025). Yak Herding in Gatlang, Nepal: The Shift From Traditional to Market-Driven Practices. Mountain Research and Development, 45(4), R1-R8. https://doi.org/10.1659/mrd.2025.00003
Acharya, K. P., Phuyal, S., & Lamichhane, B. R. (2026). A call for urgent action to protect wild yak in the Himalayan regions. Global Ecology and Conservation, 66, e04075. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2026.e04075
Kusi, N., Manandhar, P., Senn, H., Joshi, J., Ghazali, M., Hengaju, K. D., Suwal, S. P., Lama, T. L., Poudyal, L. P., Thapa, M., & Werhahn, G. (2021). Phylogeographical analysis shows the need to protect the wild yaks’ last refuge in Nepal. Ecology and Evolution, 11(12), 8310–8318. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7660
Rai, R. K., Joshi, S., Dorji, T., & Pant, B. (2023). Economics of Yak herding in the Kanchenjunga landscape of the Eastern Himalayas. Pastoralism Research Policy and Practice, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13570-023-00276-6
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