Once again this week is mostly about Shonkhor. As you’ll recall from last week, Shonkhor had headed towards some of the rocky outcrops on the outskirts of western Toson Bumba. He then headed north to check out a few additional small outcrops before making a ~23 km (15 mile) beeline back to Toson Bumba in just over 24 hours. In fact, over the past two weeks he has made a complete loop and is right back where we found him on October 27th.
Saikhan has moved back into Aztai’s home range. It ‘feels’ like Aztai is often in the same part of his home range that Saikhan is using, but I haven’t had a chance to take a close look at the data to see if that is true and, if it is, whether Aztai is following Saikhan or vice-versa.
Once again, we’ve had no updates from Tsagaan’s collar, so he doesn’t appear on the map. The good news is that thus far when we’ve retrieved the collars and downloaded the data, we’ve consistently had far more data than we’re receiving from the uplinks. So I’m hopeful that we’ll fill in the gaps on Tsagaan’s movements when Orjan (hopefully) changes out his collar this winter.
The world will be a better place when it is populated by all these animals. Economic growth and developmental activity coupled by population growth have pushed the animals into a position of near extinction. Conservation eforts to save wild life should be made a priority and full fledged efforts be made to reverse the decline in the population levels of lovely animals like snow leapard.