A mother and her three almost fully grown cubs visit a research camera.
Category: Research
Ibex are Plentiful in Kyrgyz Nature Reserve
Conservationists and rangers counted wild mountain ungulates in Sarychat-Ertash Nature Reserve and the adjacent Koiluu Hunting Concession, both in the Tian Shan Mountains of Kyrgyzstan. They found exceptionally high numbers of ibex and argali in the reserve, while populations in the concession were significantly lower.
Counting Ibex: Fall Prey Surveys Completed
Scientists and rangers in Mongolia conduct a comprehensive survey of ibex and argali, the snow leopard’s preferred prey species, in the Tost and Noyon mountains. The populations currently look stable and sufficiently large to sustain the area’s snow leopards.
Putting a Price Tag on Nature’s Priceless Gifts
The value of nature’s goods and services that local people living in Asia’s mountains depend on is several times more than their average household income. In other words, if things such as fresh water and productive grasslands provided by the ecosystem were lost, it would spell ruin for these communities. These are the results of …
Dagina Is Back on the Air
Dagina, an eight-year old female snow leopard we’ve known since she was a tiny cub, becomes our latest cat to be tracked with a GPS collar in the world’s most comprehensive study of wild snow leopards.
Snow Leopard Distribution Maps Don’t Always Show True Picture
Study finds that snow leopards only use three quarters of the presumed snow leopard habitat in Himachal Pradesh, India, raising questions about the way we map the cat’s distribution.
Trailblazers: Snow Leopards Cross Borders, Deserts, Rivers
Data from camera traps and GPS collars show endangered snow leopards dispersing to distant mountain ranges across stretches of deserted steppe, swimming across streams and rivers considered impossible to cross, and freely passing country borders.
A Wild Snow Leopard Encounter
A curious snow leopard decides to inspect a camera trap set up by researchers to monitor and study these endangered cats.
Tracking the Mountain Ghost
For almost a decade, Swedish researcher Örjan Johansson has studied the elusive snow leopards of the Gobi Desert. His pioneering work includes equipping 23 individual snow leopards with GPS collars, and publishing groundbreaking papers on how these cats use their habitat or how frequently they kill prey. Last month, Örjan defended the PhD thesis he wrote on this research. In this article, he shares some thoughts about his unique work and what motivates him to do it.
Pioneering Research Leads to PhD
Örjan Johansson’s groundbreaking work on the snow leopard’s biology and behavior has led to novel insights into the spatial needs, predation patterns, and reproduction cycle of this elusive cat. Now, after 8 years of field work, collaring 23 individual snow leopards and spending more than 1,000 nights in the Gobi Desert, this pioneering scientist has received his PhD from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.