Category: Follow The Cats

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.

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 …

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, …

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 …

  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 …