Catwalk

Kim left camp yesterday morning and I only have 7 more days before I leave. Most of the summer’s work is done, all the cameras are deployed, we have collected 191 snow leopard (?) scats (the goal was 200) and almost all the sign surveys are done. Today I collected all the traps and now the only thing that remains for me to do is to scout out a new trap area that I will move to when I return.

We have had some intense days since I last wrote and this post would be very long if I was to tell of everything that has happened but – we finally caught Aztai nine days ago and changed his collar. It was badly worn and didn’t work too well anymore, besides that the battery would run out in three months. We caught him in a trap in Camp Canyon, Koustubh actually selected that trap as the one that would first catch a leopard. Good pick.

The trap site is good but for one thing, it is surrounded by very steep walls on almost all sides. I didn’t want Aztai to wake up there since it seems that snow leopards tend to aim for the steepest terrain, within the vicinity, when they leave the capture site. Usually I try to position myself between the animal and the steep parts to guide them into safer terrain when they wake up but there was no such “safer terrain” at this site. Therefore we decided that we should move Aztai before he woke up, but just as we were finished working with him he raised his head and looked at us. It was quite warm outside and I think that this made him metabolize the drugs faster (because of a higher body temperature). Quickly I pulled up some antidote and told Munkhuu to grab Aztai’s hind legs while I grabbed the front and off we went. I held Aztai by the collar with one hand to make sure that he could not bite me and had the other around his chest. Aztai looked around and could not for his life figure out what was happening. He moved his legs back and forth and “walked” in the air with a confused look on his face. We had carried him for maybe 30 meters when we came to a boulder that we could not climb while holding the snow leopard we put him down in the hope that he would either stay there or head away from us towards the safer slopes. But no… he turned 90 degrees and took off towards a steep cliff wall…

Things like this happen so fast and there is little time to consider options. I knew that I could not stand there and watch him try to scale a cliff wall while he was still affected by the drugs and so I ran up to him and grabbed him by the collar and turned him away from the wall. Then we went for a walk; me holding on to the collar all the while. Suddenly he turned his head towards me and growled a little, I figured that was a que as good as any to let him go and off he went. Lou filmed parts of the episode and both Kim and she took pictures that hopefully will appear on the blog
soon.

This is not how a capture should be done but the animals safety must always come first. I do not think that he was too stressed about the handling since he was still drugged, it wasn’t until we put him down on the boulder that I gave him the antidote.

Summer crew

The summer crew arrived in Base Camp on the evening of the 15th of June and since then, things have been busy here. The crew consists of Kim (boss), Koustubh (our regional biologist from India), Ashley (volunteer from UK), Lou (volunteer from New Zealand), Munkhoo and Sumbee (interns from Mongolia). I have spent most of my time building traps, it takes quite a while to carry all the equipment and do all the digging and hammering alone, especially since the days are borderline to oven warm now. I am trapping the same area as when I first came here last year but some things have changed… there aren’t many fresh snow leopard sign in the canyons… instead, the area is now swarming with ibex… So far we have caught eight of them in our snares. There are two major problems with this, first – there is currently no purpose in trapping the ibex, maybe there could be at a later stage if we start collaring them but right now we do not have enough funding to buy radio collars for both snow leopards and ibex, secondly – the buggers destroy my carefully selected trap sites. I have been able to restore some of the traps while others have had to be moved.

Meanwhile, the summer crew has been very busy putting out cameras all over the mountain range, performing snow leopard sign surveys and collecting snow leopard scats. It is a very ambitious study that they have planned and it could very well have worked if our car hadn’t taken one blow too much and finally succumbed to the Gobi terrain. We have been repairing it as good as possible given the place we’re at for months to keep it running but have finally had to accept that all hope is gone and that we will have to buy a new car. To make matters worse, I sent the dirt bike (motocross) to UB to have the engine fixed, it’s been using lots of oil ever since we bought it. So for a while we seemed to be down to the Chinese bike, and even though I have a picture of a family of six riding one bike, I do think that it would have been crowded with the entire crew on one bike. Miraculously though, Miji was able to get the car to Gurvantes and have some more stuff welded to the undercarriage to keep the various parts in place and it is now possible to use it if one drives slow and careful.

Byamba is on his way here in his Russian-made van and will stay in camp until the 18th of July to help with the fieldwork. By then, Lou and I will drive our car to UB in caravan with Byamba and his car.. Provided that we can get the car to UB, we will repair it and sell it, we’ll see what happens on the trip… and I thought it was an adventure to drive the car up to UB when it was in good shape last autumn. This means that I will go home a little sooner than planned but we need to get the car to UB and there doesn’t seem to be too much activity in the current trap area anyways.