Towering more than 29,000 feet above sea level, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on the planet, and is often described as the Roof of the World. It’s called Sagarmatha in Nepali, and Qomolangma in Tibetan.

In the mid-1980s, The Mountain Institute began working in the transboundary area of this spectacular mountain; and in 1989 the Qomolangma Nature Preserve (QNP) was created. Nearly 13,000 square miles in size, it is a cross-border protected area nearly the size of Switzerland…with rolling plains, river valleys, timbered forests, and a Tibetan population of 68,000 herders and farmers.

Meet Chemdu, a dropka (herder) from the remote village of Shishabangma, at an altitude of 4700 meters (approximately 15,000 feet). Life in this village is not easy. In the winter temperatures drop to – 40 degrees Centigrade ( - 40 F); and a particularly fierce snowstorm can devastate the herders who rely totally on their yaks for survival. The l village has a small community school; but once children are old enough, they often join their parents in the fields, tending the livestock. There is no clinic; health care is days away.

Chemdu and others in this community have worked with The Mountain Institute to develop fodder production plots, using solar fencing to protect small areas where winter feed can be grown. During the warmer months, the fences prevent the wild gazelles and other wildlife from eating the fodder; and when the harsh winter arrives, the villagers have much-needed food for their yaks.

Shishabangma translates as “animal carcasses/failed crops”; and villagers have experienced plenty of both for many years. The solar fencing project, initiated in 2002, already has changed the lives of 20 families in this village and has been expanded to other remote mountain communities in the QNP in 2003 and 2004.

“Our herds are everything to us,” Chemdu says. “Now that we can feed them in winter we can survive.”