Abstract:

Historically, frequent and heavy snow disaster (SD) has caused serious livestock death and casualties, resulting in a devastating impact on animal husbandry development in the Three Rivers Source Region (TRSR). From winter in 2018 to spring in 2019, the largest SD occurred in this area over the past 10 years, especially in core zones of the Lancang River Source Region. Field research results show that the main causes of the major SD include weak infrastructure (i.e., roads, communications, warm sheds, and insufficient forage reserve), low rate of domestic animals for sale before the SD, and low loss settlement rate. SD occurrence could furtherly reduce the ability of disaster prevention, mitigation and relief of disaster loss. In the future, heavily affected SD areas should improve the forecasting ability of snowfall incidents, strengthen infrastructure construction, implement grass and livestock balance strategies, optimize livestock structure, improve loss settlement rate, and develop a modern compound model of animal husbandry development model that combines breeding, slaughtering and deep processing of animal product.

Key words: Three Rivers Source Region, snow disaster, severely affected area, risk prevention, control strategy