Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who bought a one-way ticket to Mongolia to work at the base camp of our long-term research project. These are his adventures…
On February 24th, a third snow leopard was fitted with a GPS radio transmitting collar. For more facts about the snow leopard, click HERE.
It all started as I walked out to listen to our trap-transmitters I suddenly felt that someone was watching me (you know this weird feeling one can get sometimes), I looked up and saw the eye reflections of a big animal about 30 meters away. It hunched down as my headlight hit it, I pulled out my Maglite and when the beam hit it , the animal fled. Hard to be 100 % certain in the dark but it did look like a leopard.
Then, the night after, two transmitters went off. All alone, pitch black and 16 degrees C below… My heart was as heavy as my load as I climbed the canyon with two backpacks and my hands full of equipment.
The collar placement went well. I skipped some of the samples and measurements and focused on the cats safety. After a little less than an hour he left the site. The cat will likely be named Tsagaan (it means “white” in Mongolian). The day after, Tsagaan Sar (the white month) begun (which is the biggest Mongolian holiday). Further, the cat looked white in the LED light from my head lamp.
On the 24th, Jenny and Geir Rune [colleagues of Orjan] arrived in camp. They had not been here for more than two hours before a snow leopard begun screaming mating calls in the mountain behind camp. The cat came closer and closer and in the end, the valley echoed with the screams. We went out and I could see eyes reflecting my torch (for the third time in three days). Pretty thrilling moment and I think you can understand how the Swedes (or the Swede and the Norwegian to be picky) felt. Twenty minutes later we listened to the transmitters and the closest one to where the cat was heading was beeping.
This felt a bit too much really. Jenny and Geir had been here for maybe three hours now and we already ready to collar another snow leopard? It wasn’t hard to understand how the talk would go back home “no, collaring snow leopards is a child’s game, don’t know what Orjan is doing out there really…”
We packed up and headed for the trap. Something had stepped in it (and made a new scrape nearby) but there was no leopard to be found.
We checked the transmitters when we came back and one was silent. I took the bike to check it. Looks like an animal has played with the antenna and transmitter and finally bit off the cord…