On April 12th the snow leopard Tsagaan was found dead. The uplinks from his GPS collar reported that he was stationary for four days. That was followed by seven days of radio silence. Orjan and the field team traveled to the site where he had been stationary to investigate and sadly found Tsagaan’s body. We …
Category: Follow The Cats
May's Photo of the Month
May’s Photo of the Month is placing the focus on three very special snow leopards living in the mountain range of northern India. Two cubs have been seen on our research cameras exploring and playing throughout their home range, a carefree pastime only made possible by the watchful patience of their incredible mother. This picture …
A New Female is Welcomed into Our Long-term Study
With our field researchers settled back in at our Mongolian base camp, this field season is off to a great start. We are thrilled to welcome a new female into our long term ecological study! Orjan, a PhD student from Sweden reports on the event below: “We caught a new cat yesterday. Finally all the …
The Snow Leopard Tsagaan Passes Away
One of the snow leopards in our long term ecological study, Tsagaan, recently died. We do not yet know the cause of his death but we are actively investigating and will post the findings as soon as we have them. Our field researcher Orjan explains. Two days ago I got an email saying that Tsagaan …
Zaraa's Walk to the Border
Koustubh, our Regional Field Biologist, sent us this great update recently: Zaraa has done something really exciting this week… On the 19th, she set out South, all the way to China for an expedition through an area that seems to have no mountains at all!!! She went into the open steppe from the area that …
How snow leopards 'leave the nest'
We’ve been really excited to follow two female snow leopard: Tenger and her daughter Zaraa and now, for the first time, we are watching this snow leopard cub ‘leave the nest!’ The timing of Zaraa’s apparent separation from her mother is occurring around the time of year when we believe snow leopards begin breeding. This makes us speculate whether …
Tenger and Her Daughter Zaraa Part Ways
Since late last autumn, the Snow Leopard Trust has been following a Mother-Daughter pair through our long-term ecological study in Mongolia. Zaraa, who is a little less than two years old, has been traveling so close to her mother Tenger that their GPS location markers are often times on top of each other. In the …
Aztai's Long Walk
We recently got an update from Koustubh, our Regional Field Biologist, about the latest trek that the wild cat Aztai made in Mongolia: Couldn’t resist the temptation of sharing this exciting episode of Mr. Aztai and his long walk. He seems to be fond of taking these long walks almost periodically, though the frequency is …
A Snow Leopard Romance for Valentine's Day
With Tsagaan fitted with an improved GPS tracking collar this past September, we have learned a remarkable amount of information on his recent whereabouts. His home range overlaps with that of Khashaa, Tenger and Zara (the three females in our research study) and his GPS locations show him visiting all of them more than once …
Snow doesn't stop snow leopard research
Dear blog readers, thanks for a great year. Here is an end-of-the-year update about our long-term snow leopard study in the South Gobi, Mongolia. November marked one of the coldest months in South Gobi with mercury dipping to abysmal limits. Field work became increasingly difficult and our camp remained under thick cover of snow. Despite …