Category: Follow The Cats

Once again this week is mostly about Shonkhor. As you’ll recall from last week, Shonkhor had headed towards some of the rocky outcrops on the outskirts of western Toson Bumba. He then headed north to check out a few additional small outcrops before making a ~23 km (15 mile) beeline back to Toson Bumba in …

This week the news is mostly about Shonkhor.  He has continued his roving ways with a trip to some smaller mountains on the outskirts of Toson Bumba (~14 km/9 miles west of the main mountain range).  It’ll be interesting to see if he heads back to his usual area or continues further west to explore …

We pinpointed the location of Itgel’s collar to a spot near the top of a mountain in Toson Bumba.  This seemed an unlikely spot for a snow leopard to die or be caught in a trap set for wolves, so it seemed to support our earlier notion that Itgel had finally managed to slip his …

This week’s map looks quite a bit like last week’s. Saikhan (green) is still in hanging out in the core of Aztai’s (yellow) home range and appears to have made at least one kill; he was at the same location from October 22nd to 24th, and at a second location from the 25th-26th. Shonkhor (purple) …

The last two weeks must have been the calm before the storm, as the cats are on the move again. Saikhan left the Tost Mountains on October 16th, made a brief visit to Toson Bumba very near the area where Itgel was captured, before showing up practically on top of the research camp on October …

The cats were pretty quiet again this week. Shonkhor continues to be a bit ‘bolder’ in his explorations than we’ve seen in the past. He visited the corridor area in the western Tost mountains and also ventured about 5km further west in Toson Bumba than we’ve seen him go before.

Things are relatively quiet in the Gobi this week. All of our radio-collared cats are just ‘patrolling’ small areas. It’ll be interesting to see if Saikhan remains in that part of the Tost Mountains or heads off on another trek.

We just received word from Bayara that the Governor and his team were able to locate Itgel’s collar. There was no sign of Itgel, however, so it seems likely that he was finally able to push the collar over his head. He was a smaller cat and the collar was ill-fitting, so Orjan and I …

Both Saikhan (green) and Shonkhor (purple) have continued their eastward movement. Shonkhor is now within 3.5 km of the site where Itgel was trapped, so hopefully he won’t run into any trouble with traps set for wolves in that area.