Climate change and horse hair: worse than you think

July 4, 2017, 8:43 AM · A renowned French luthier told me today that his recent trip to Mongolia was shocking. The grass that would easily grow a meter high was less than 10 cm tall, and had been like that for more seasons than the ranchers would like to admit.

Mongolia ranchers are not a social media type, nor the mobile phone type, so the only way you will have this sort of access is by actually going to Mongolia and witnessing it for yourself. Not only is the grazing for the horses less and less each year, the locusts have invaded in record numbers, eating the grass and further destabilizing the ecosystem.

The horses still have tails, so you can rest assure your toilet scrub brush is from Mongolia. But the hair that luthiers need, the high quality hanks, this hair is no longer available form Mongolian horses. Their tails are too malnourished and the horses are too stressed to grow lush manes.

This is where he told me a dirty secret of fine bow makers, so shocking the image to players that luthiers prefer their suppliers not tell them how or where the hair was "harvested". To find where all the good hair has gone, we have to travel to Australia. I do not want to full PETA, and neither is the luthier an avid animal crusader, so I am just relaying what he told me: Australian men fly in helicopters, using high powered rifles to kill white horses for their tails, because their tails are the best in the world.

It's not poaching, but if you try and imagine these beautiful beasts with lush manes, and running for their lives from an armed helicopter.

Kind of hard to believe, but if we consider the stressed horses trying to graze on what is left of dry grass that is infested with locusts (something he witnessed first hand when he visited), how unfeasible is it to think that the usable parts for our bows are no longer from Mongolian horses?

I am cellist (sorry, their is no "cellist.com) and no crusader of animals, not a vegan nor a vegetarian, so don't take this post the wrong way. It is shocking that this "secret" is not one luthiers want public, because the horses from Australia are white, not good for meat but perfect for mane. And our bows.

I'll follow up later with more information on this.

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Climate change and horse hair: worse than you think

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