Reported today on the BBC's South Asia news site, recent heavy snow is threatening the survival of grazing livestock on Ladakh's Chang thang. It would appear that the crisis is on a similar scale to that experienced in the winter of 1998 when similar events resulted in the starvation of thousands of yak, sheep and goat. The gravity of the situation is partly attributed to the locust activity which has decimated fodder supplies in parts of eastern Ladakh (and much of Zangskar) over the last three summers.