After spending most of the past two weeks in the eastern part of the Toson Bumba Mountains, Itgel (orange) has moved nearly 15 km west, back towards the site where he was radio-collared. Saikhan (green) is continuing his eastward movement in the Tost Mountains, while Shonkhor (purple) has made repeated ~20 km movements back and …
Category: Follow The Cats
Movement from Igtel, Meals for Shonkor and Saikhan
Itgel (the injured cat, shown in orange) remains in the eastern edge of the Toson Bumba Mountains. We’re getting uplinks from his collar more frequently, which indicates that he’s spending increasing amounts of time in open terrain and less time holed up in caves. After spending three days on what was likely a good meal, …
Weekly Cat Update: And the award for longest walk goes to….
We’re seeing a lot of movement from our radio-collared snow leopards this week. After visiting the area northwest of our research camp, the cats appear to be using a corridor to move between the Tost and Toson Bumba mountain ranges. Shonkhor has moved back to Toson Bumba to an area slightly further east than we’ve …
Weekly Cat Update: Saikhan trailing Aztai?
Cat movement 8-31-09 The most interesting movements we’re seeing this week are from Aztai and Saikhan. Saikhan has been moving around Aztai’s home range since August 21st and it appears that Aztai is “trailing” him. It’s impossible to tell how often the cats have direct encounters because the timing at which the collars collect …
Weekly Cat Update: Tsagaan's collar sends first uplink in a month
Well – a minor miracle has occurred! After not hearing from Tsagaan for over a month, his collar transmitted a location on August 23rd. He’s right back in his usual home range in the Tost Mountains. The most plausible explanation is that the collar had rotated sideways on his neck, which either interfered with the …
Weekly Cat Update: Saikhan in the badlands
Saikhan continues his exploratory movements. This time he ventured several kilometers into a “badlands” area of low-lying sandstone-like formations in the Toson-Bumba mountain range, and area that we would consider to be ‘unsuitable’ snow leopard habitat. Itgel continues to make small, but consistent movements in the vicinity of the site where we collared him. Unfortunately …
New Challenges For Snow Leopards Arise in Mongolia
Twice this year, and possibly a third time, snow leopards have been captured or injured in steel-jaw leg-hold traps intended to capture wolves. The most recent incident occurred on July 5th when a herder arrived at the Snow Leopard Trust’s research camp to report a snow leopard caught in a wolf trap near his ger …
Itgel is on the move
We received another uplink from Itgel’s collar this morning. (Itgel is the snow leopard with the hurt leg – his range is shown in orange.) He is not far from his last location, but he at least continues to show some movement. Note that Saikhan (green) has left the Tost Mountains and crossed over the …
Fifth Cat Collared: Saikhan
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… We placed a GPS tracking collar on a fifth snow leopard. It is a male, what else to expect. We might have hit jackpot though, he weighs 33.8 …
Fourth Snow Leopard: Shonkhor
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… I am doing something wrong. We placed a collar on our fourth snow leopard a couple of days ago. It is a … male. Surprise eh? Don’t know …