(Follow the Cats posts are usually accompanied by a satellite map, but Koustubh, our map-maker, is currently in the field collecting data.)
The first two weeks of May, Shonkhor had all of us guessing about his next move. He had embarked on an incredible journey 60 km to the west of base camp, and we were curious to see if he would travel another 15 km North toward the Three Beauties National Park, or possibly 30 km South-west toward the Great Gobi National Park. We can now report that instead of either of these options, he remained in the unprotected region, and returned to the area that has been the core of his home range for nearly one year now. While the uplinks from his collar are still erratic, we continue to learn about young dispersing cats through his movements. His collar was programmed to drop off on the 31st of May and the team will therefore begin searching for it in the coming week. (Note: following each collars drop off date, the GPS unit continues transmitting a signal giving the team time to locate and retrieve the collar. Although uplinks to the satellite are sometimes erratic, once the collar is collected, all the stored data points, including those that did not uplink, can be accessed for a more accurate picture of all Shonkhor’s movements..
Khavar, collared in early May, has been utilizing an area that nearly completely overlaps with what we refer to as Aztai’s home range. Orjan originally speculated that Khavar is a young individual, so it will be intriguing to determine in our future DNA analysis if he is related to any of our known cats. Aztai’s recent locations nearly fully overlapped with Khavar’s – but with a gap of about a day’s time. Aztai has remained within the core of his home range.
We received two uplinks in the last 15 days from Devekh’s collar. The location depicted him at the north edge of the mountains once again. Based on surveys of the site that Orjan conduced recently, this area has a population of argali and is nearly unpopulated by people. We are collecting more habitat data of the area and hope to compare and contrast attributes in order to develop a better understanding of the characteristics of the sites these snow leopards are utilizing.
Image Courtesy of SLT/Nature Conservation Foundation.