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Forests and grasslands make up 58 percent of the region's land mass, but each year 2 million hectares (20,000 square kms) are degraded and rendered useless, Patrick Durst, a FAO senior forestry officer told a food conference in Ulan Bator.
Across the Asia-Pacific, 400 million hectares (4 mln sq kms) - an area equal to the combined size of India and Myanmar - are now in bad need of restoration, he said. "We are already seeing strong negative impacts," Durst told Reuters at the conference.
In China and Mongolia, over-grazing and poor land management mean herders increasingly have to give up feeding their livestocks and instead look for new jobs in fast-growing cities. Lost grassland boosts desertification and helps cause massive sand storms that sometimes carry as far as eastern Canada....
A lone tree in Mongolia, shot by tiarescott, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
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