More bad news about cashmere

In follow-up to The planetary cost of cashmere, we have more bad news.  Cashmere goat farming in Mongolia at ever higher and higher altitudes has increased killings of endangered snow leopards.  I was particularly shocked by this quote taken from Globalization of the Cashmere Market and the Decline of Large Mammals in Central Asia, published in the journal Conservation Biology:

"In the absence of commitment across global and local scales, this iconic wildlife will cease to persist as they have for millennia, concluded an international team of researchers in the journal Conservation Biology. "Rather than serving as symbols of success, these species will become victims of fashion." The study showed that 95% of all the forage across the Tibetan plateau, Mongolia and northern India was consumed by goats, sheep and other livestock, leaving just 5% for wild animals.

I have previously written how boring it would be if the world consisted of only humans and the things that we eat, but I guess I should have taken a more holistic view. I should have written, "only humans and the things that we consume."

Snow leopard photo courtesy of wallpaperstock.net.