Tsagaan Fitted With A New Collar

Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who works at the base camp of our long-term research project in Mongolia. These are his adventures…

This morning at 6.10 the trap surveillance system woke me up with the LED light indicating a “trap alarm” blinking. Whew, that siren is loud enough to cause a heart attack! I’m feeling a little like a fire-fighter now that we have this system, constantly ready to go at the sound of the siren.

I passed by my neighbour Ganaa (the man who named Khashaa) on the way to the snow leopard. I had barely arrived at the cat before Ganaa showed up and asked if he could bring his wife and daughter. They all came on the same motorbike five minutes later. To begin with they seemed hesitant and stood ten meters away but when I told them to come closer it didn’t take long before they had examined every part of the cat, from head to toe. They did this in the most gentle way with their faces shining of excitement.

We’ve known this snow leopard since September 2008, when we our trap camreas took the first pictures of him. He was fitted with a collar for the first time in February 2009, and at that time named Tsagaan. Since then, we have changed his collar two more times, but unfortunately not received very much data. Hopefully, this new collar will work better.

We were set about 100 meters from Ganaa’s ger/yurt (as the crow flies), from the pugmarks in the sand one could tell that Tsagaan was heading away from the ger. Before we woke the cat up, we placed ourselves between the cat and the ger to prevent him from stumbling into the goats. One could tell that Ganaa and his family were truly amazed that the leopard had come so close to their ger without any commotion, and to see Tsagaan slowly and without any aggression or panic leaving the scene.

I’m pretty sure that the snow leopards have found three new friends and that the daughter will have a story to tell in school on Monday morning.