With great sadness, we report that Shonkhor, a snow leopard we have been following since April, 2009 in our long-term ecological study, has passed away. His last GPS update in early August indicated something was wrong, and our field staff rushed to the scene. While it appears Shonkhor died of natural causes, we have sent …
Tag: Shonkhor
A close call for the snow leopard Shonkhor
In February one of the male snow leopard we are studying, Shonkhor, killed 13 livestock belonging to a herding family in southern Mongolia. Incidents like this have driven other herders in Mongolia to kill snow leopards , but in a heartening act of tolerance this herder decided to contact our staff to seek another option. While it is not …
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 …
A Wild Snow Leopard is Growing Up
Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who works at the base camp of our long-term research project in Mongolia. These are his adventures… As we came back to camp after a long day of searching snow leopard hunting sites (places where we know snow leopards have been eating) we had an alarm on our surveillance system. We …
Follow the Cats Update: Zaraa Enters the Badlands
(Map Courtesy of SLT/Panthera) We are happy to announce that the collars worn by Aztai, Khavar and Zaraa continue to work fabulously, uploading up to 80% of the scheduled locations; those of Shonkhor, Tsagaan, Saikhan and Devekh seem to be under-performing. The good news is that Orjan will be returning to the field shortly (he …
Follow the Cats Update: Shonkhor's Incredible Journey, Devekh's Collar Mystery
The most remarkable journey to date came from Shonkhor this fortnight! Shonkhor (red), collared in April last year, has taken an extensive expedition to the west, much further than where he wandered in previous weeks. Shonkhor’s last location was 60 km west of our base camp. We are curious to see if he continues to …
GPS Study: Aztai has guests in his home range
Aztai (green) continues to avidly patrol the core of his home range. In the last two weeks, we were able to fit Aztai with a new collar, and it appears that he made a kill on April 24th. With so many new male recruits hovering around his territory, he seems to be very busy marking …
GPS Study: Following Devekh Across Mongolia's Tost Mountains
As you can see on the map, Devekh’s movements these past two weeks have been remarkable (Devekh’s positions and trajectories are represented by the blue dots and lines). He has already given us quite a lot of data points to follow! Two weeks ago Devekh was heading Southeast toward the Tost Mountains. He continued this …
New Collared Cat M7 is A Fast Mover
After several weeks of only hearing from one or two cats, we have recent location uplinks from four of the five collared snow leopards. Perhaps one of the most remarkable journeys depicted by this data is that of our newest cat we call M7 (blue). He is a real mover! He was fitted with his …
Fourth Snow Leopard: Shonkhor
Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who bought a one-way ticket to Mongolia to work at the base camp of our long-term research project. These are his adventures… I am doing something wrong. We placed a collar on our fourth snow leopard a couple of days ago. It is a … male. Surprise eh? Don’t know …