Base Camp Renovations are Complete!

So much has happened during the three weeks since I returned from Sweden that it is hard to know where to begin. I arrived together with Jennifer from the Snow Leopard Trust. I have only met her briefly before, but can recommend getting to know her, as she is a lot of fun to spend time with. The camp was bristling with activity when we got there: 12 people were building foundations for the big solar panels that were donated by Stephen Gold and the Wildlife Conservation Network Solar Power Project. New gers were being erected, and the (without doubt) finest toilet in the Gobi was built from the crates that the panels were shipped in. In the middle of all this was Ben Morlang, a volunteering engineer directing all the work and Bayara translating and keeping an eye on things.

At the same time, Koustubh was busy preparing a week-long course on survey techniques and methodologies for 20 Mongolian biologists. Koustubh and I usually have a lot of fun solving various world problems, including how to best “curry” our food rations, but there wasn’t much time for such social activities now.

Sumbee, our new camp manager, also had a very busy time helping out, coordinating and keeping an eye on all things at the same time. Our first donor trip would arrive in camp about a week after I arrived, and everything had to be ready for that.To top it off, Nigel, an English journalist, arrived in camp to write a story about Snow Leopard Trust.

In a miraculous way, we managed to get everything ready on time. The paint on the toilet was still drying when the donors arrived, that’s how close it was. I write “we,” but to be honest, I’m not sure what my part was. I know that I told some stories and I did drink a lot of tea, but apart from that I’m not sure. Oh yes – I made some drawings for the Mongolian biologists, explaining different techniques for studying wildlife. The biologists seemed to enjoy that “lecture”, though it could also be that they were laughing at my drawings… I was actually about to start an education to become a landscape architect, once. Gave it up when I realized that it required a talent for art.

Anyways, hats off for all the people who worked so hard to build our new Base camp!

New Collaring System More Efficient, And Even Better for Snow Leopards

When we want to collar a snow leopard, we first have to restrain them using safe, non-harmful snares. All our snares are equipped with a small transmitter that sends out a VHF pulse or beacon. The transmitter sends out a pulse every second if the snare is OK. When an animal steps in the snare it will release a plunger from the transmitter that changes to a pulse every 1/2 second. Each transmitter has a unique VHF frequency that it sends out these pulses on. Earlier on we had to climb to an elevated position where one could hear all trap transmitters using a receiver and a hand-held antenna every third hour from dusk to late morning.

There were two problems with this method:

1. An animal could be in the snare up to four hours before we sedated it (three hour listening interval and one hour to get there). Four hours is pretty good compared to many other studies, but we want to minimize the time in the snare.

2. It wears researchers down to get up every three hours and climb a hill for up to 90 consecutive nights. Especially in midwinter when one has to put on heavy down clothes not to get frostbites. It is not possible to conduct denser manual intervals under these conditions.

Luckily Orjan’s brother Torbjorn happens to be very, very skilled at signal analysis and he offered to try and build an automatic surveillance system for us. The system consists of two parts, one that is placed on a mountain and one that is kept in the ger. The mountain station has a telescopic mast anchored in the ground and a little device that listens to all our trap transmitters. If a trap transmitter changes pulse or if the system lose contact with one of the trap transmitters – the mountain station sends a message to the “ger/yurt station”. This message activates a siren that is loud enough to wake even the most tired researcher. The siren is also activated in case the “ger station” loses contact with the “mountain station”. Meaning the system is foolproof.

This surveillance system reduces the time that an animal has to spend in the snare to the time the researchers has to get dressed, grab their gear and transport themselves to the site. Our capture gear is constantly ready to go so in most situations we can have the animal sedated 20-30 minutes after it got caught. The longest it can possibly take is one hour.

To our knowledge we are the first to have a system like this. Many of the major telemetry companies claimed that it wasn’t possible to build one when we contacted them. It is not possible to describe the relief that it has given both to the capture team who can now get some rest, but mainly to the animals who don’t have to wait before they are sedated, collared and released.

Thanks to Snow Leopard Trust donor Rhetick Sengupta for helping fund the building of this amazing new relay system.

Tsagaan Fitted With A New Collar

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 cameras 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.

Surprise, A Female: New Snow Leopard Joins Study

Hi All,

Yesterday we caught a new snow leopard, believe it or not it is a female!! She seems large (although we don’t have much to compare to yet, do we.) as she weighed 36 kg, and was 115 cm in body length with 98 cm long tail. We think that she is 4-6 years old and that she has had cubs at some point. It will be interesting to follow her movements.

The collaring went smoothly even though we weren’t mentally prepared: we finished setting up just seven hours before! We invited my nearest neighbor to join in and he tentatively named the cat Khashaa.