Some of the best conservationists are found among the rural communities who live side by side with the world’s endangered species. Davaa, a Mongolian herder, is such a local champion. Selected by his neighbors and friends as a community ranger, he now helps encourage sustainable practices and fosters tolerance among the community for the elusive snow leopard.
GPS collars will allow Snow Leopard Trust researchers to better understand the elusive species.
A recent outbreak of PPR, a viral disease common among ruminants, has killed nearly a quarter of Mongolia’s population of saiga, an endangered antelope species. The disease has the potential to spread to key snow leopard prey species in the area as well.
Tsetsen, a male snow leopard wearing a GSP collar in Mongolia’s Tost Mountains as part of the Snow Leopard Trust’s long-term study of these cats, has gone offline as scheduled. The batteries on Tsetsen’s collar appear to have run out. The collar itself will drop off the cat in the next weeks.
The saga of Anu continues. This snow leopard mother living in Mongolia’s Tost mountains not only keeps surprising us – she also provides a powerful example of nature’s perseverance!
The Snow Leopard Trust makes it a priority to help train the next generation of conservation leaders in snow leopard range countries. Mongolian student Tengis is one such potential future conservationist. He’s also an ardent soccer fan, which is reflected in the names he chose for ‘his’ snow leopards.
Meet Garav, the Mongolian Wildlife Ranger whose leadership helped shape ‘her’ National Park into one of her country’s finest and most effective conservation areas.
A research camera in Mongolia’s Tost Mountains captures amazing footage of a wild snow leopard mother and her three cubs!
Amarsaikhan is a herder in the Tost Mountains of Mongolia. Everyone here calls him Amara. He has spent his entire life living alongside the elusive snow leopard – not seeing the cat very often, but feeling its presence much more frequently than he’d have cared for. Every year, snow leopards killed several of his horses and fawns—an expense he and his community could hardly withstand. Amara not only feared these cats – “to be honest, I think I hated them”, he says. On several occasions, he attempted to kill snow leopards that had come near his camp. Luckily, he never succeeded.
Snow Leopard Trust researcher Örjan Johansson recently published a groundbreaking study where he could show that most Protected Areas in the cats’ habitat are too small to hold viable snow leopard populations. In this article, he explains how he and his team calculated snow leopard home ranges using data from cats they tracked with GPS collars.
