Aztai (green) has communicated 740 locations ever since he was first collared two years ago, and then re-collared last year in June. Every week, his locations unravel more mysteries about snow leopards than were ever known. This week, we are intrigued by what appear to be two “clusters” separated by a distance of only 2.5 km and by less than 2 days. Clusters are a series of locations that occur within a few meters from each other. This clustering of points one-on-top of the other usually indicates that the cat is staying in one place. At this time we can only speculate about the reason, and in this case, we are most intrigued by the fact that there are two clusters such a short time and distance apart. Perhaps Aztai made two kills in less than four days? Perhaps after having made a kill himself, he then scavenged on a kill made by another snow leopard? Could he simply have been resting, or is there more to it than what we know and understand about these cats at this time? We hope to learn more about this and these “cluster situations” in the coming weeks by having our research team implement “ground truthing” of these cluster locations very soon after the cat leaves the area.
We received three uplinks from Shonkhor (red) last week, telling us no more than that he is within his home range. Whether he finished his expedition to Aztai’s home range or came back mid-way is something we hope to learn once his collar is retrieved and the data stored onboard is recovered.
Orjan is reaching the Tost Mountains and will build his satellite camp about 5 km East of our base camp to begin this season’s collaring. While Tsagaan, Supermom and Saikhan are the primary and hopeful targets, we are prepared to be surprised by an unknown snow leopard should they appear instead.