Fourth of July in the Gobi
Posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009
I’m writing from the Snow Leopard Trust’s research camp in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia where I’ve been living for the past month. Camp consists of three gers (yurts) that serve as a kitchen/dining room, office, and bunkhouse. From the mountain behind camp you can look south and see the border with China just 35 miles away. It’s very dry and brown here but there is a stark beauty in the ruggedness of the landscape. And it’s one of those rare places where it’s so quiet that you wake to the sound of the breeze blowing or the chukar calling. Every morning I rise before the rest of the crew, brew a cup of coffee, and spend the first few hours of the day in the company of the ibex who graze in the valley near camp.
The J. Tserendeleg Snow Leopard Research Center in South Gobi, Mongolia
This summer our field crew is comprised of seven staff members, volunteers, students, and interns representing six countries – Mongolia, Sweden, New Zealand, India, England, and the United States. As much as I love my work, it’s the people that I have the opportunity to meet that are one of my greatest sources of inspiration – folks from all walks of life who are united by their love of snow leopards and the wild places they inhabit, and their desire to help protect the species. And of course, there’s the tantalizing possibility that you might catch a glimpse of one of the rare cats along the way.
Snow leopards are incredibly difficult to see in the wild, but fortunately they leave behind evidence of their presence; they scrape the ground in much the same way a domestic cat scrapes the sand in its litter box. They deposit a spray of scent on these scrapes to announce to other snow leopards that they’ve recently been through an area.
Since mid-June we’ve been spending long days in the field hiking in remote parts of the Tost and Toson Bumba mountain ranges around camp looking for sites that are frequently marked by snow leopards to deploy our remote cameras. We’ll leave the cameras out for a month, then bring them back in to review the photos we’ve captured when an animal walks past them. Because every snow leopard has a unique spot pattern, just like a human fingerprint, we can use the photos to identify individuals to estimate the population size.
Mongolian student interns, Munkhoo and Sumbee, examine the immobilized cat. Although the species is part of their wildlife heritage, this is the first time either of them has seen a live snow leopard.
Another aspect of our study involves capturing snow leopards to fit them with GPS radio-collars. The collars collect three locations a day and transmit them to the internet via a satellite phone network, allowing us to monitor the locations of our collared animals in real-time. Currently we’ve got about a dozen foothold snares placed strategically in the canyons around our camp. On each snare we attach a radio-transmitter that emits a signal with a slow pulse rate if the snare is untripped. When the snare is tripped the pulse rate doubles, signaling that an animal may have been captured. We monitor these transmitters every 3 hours throughout the night to ensure we detect a captured animal quickly and minimize the amount of time it spends in a snare.
Three nights ago we were awaked by one of our crew at 2 a.m. when he detected that one of our snares had been tripped. We all got dressed and headed out to the canyon north of camp, only to discover that a snow leopard had escaped from our snare. The cable must have caught it low on its paw, allowing it to pull its foot free. At 5 a.m. I was back up to do the morning trap check and another transmitter was going off, this time in the canyon just off camp. I woke the crew and this time when we reached the snare we were greeted by a pair of luminous gray eyes! It was Aztai (which means ‘lucky’ in Mongolian), the first snow leopard we captured when we began our study last August. We’d been hoping to recapture him to change out his collar because the battery was supposed to die soon. The capture went flawlessly and we just received the first locations from the new collar indicating that Aztai has already moved 12 miles to the western edge of his range.
Kim and Ph.D. Swedish student, Orjan Johansson, with Aztai during his recent recapture.
Seeing Aztai again was both rewarding and sobering. It’s exciting to know we’ll have the opportunity to follow him for another year, gathering information on his movements that will help us to develop better strategies for conserving snow leopards. But we noted that Aztai has lost a toe on his left front paw, likely to a trap set by a poacher. Even though snow leopards are protected rangewide and killing them is punishable by stiff fines, it’s difficult to enforce the laws with so little infrastructure in a country as large as Mongolia. Although his paw is completely healed and he appears to have suffered no ill effects, it was still a stark reminder of the challenges we face is protecting this magnificent species.
Aztai is now missing one of his toes, evidence of a likely encounter with a trap set for a wolf at some time in the past year.
Sitting here in the office, gazing out the ger door at the desert that stretches endlessly in all directions, listening to the cook clattering around in the kitchen as she prepares our evening meal, it’s almost unfathomable to me that I’ll be back home in Seattle by week’s end. But I will take home with me fond memories of this field season, and of the companionship of our staff and crew, and comfort in the knowledge that this landscape will be unchanged when I return next summer.
Ph.D. student, Orjan Johansson, and intern, Munkhoo, carry Aztai to a safe spot to recover from the immobilization shortly after collaring.
Aztai wearing his new radio-collar. The collar will allow researchers to follow his movements over the next year.
This Inspired Mountain Ambassador joined the Snow Leopard Trust in 2008. As the Assistant Director of Science, Kim oversees the first long-term study of snow leopards at our research center in South Gobi, Mongolia. The group is working to conserve snow leopards by answering fundamental ecological questions about this elusive and little-studied cat.
