AKIPRESS.COM - Kazakhstan is using natural gas and cows made genetically efficient to slow the pace of land degradation caused by deforestation and overgrazing, a top official from the Central Asian nation said on Friday, Reuterssaid.

Damage to the region’s unique cold winter deserts could have long-lasting consequences that will leave residents with no way of making a living, officials warned at a three-day regional food conference in southwest Russia.

The extent of degradation is difficult to assess because countries in Central Asia do not release official figures, but anecdotal evidence shows the situation is serious, said Christian Welscher, project coordinator for the Central Asian Desert Initiative (CADI) at University of Greifswald, Germany.

The CADI is working with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to combat land degradation and conserve biodiversity.

Mars Almabek, deputy chairman of the State Agriculture Inspection, said Kazakhstan is buying and importing modified cattle from the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, France and Czechoslovakia.

“We are bringing natural gas to rural areas so they won’t cut down trees ... and we are suggesting maybe they have three cows instead of 10 but produce the same volume of milk,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In the past five years, Kazakhstan imported some 50,000 cows to the oil-rich former Soviet republic of 18 million people, Almabek said.

Plans also include increasing the number of nature reserves to protect biodiversity, he said.