In just a few years, many of the forests south of Everest had been stripped bare, their trees burned to satisfy the tourist's insatiable needs of for cooking and heating. Grazing goats - an animal not native to the region - were stripping the fields and valleys of vegetation. Without the vegetation necessary to provide a habitat, birds and animals dwindled in number and variety. Populations of the rare musk deer and the even rarer [I 014 / snow leopard] have also ben thinned by poachers to the point of near extinction.
