Cats and long days

We have collared three cats in the past two and a half week. First out was Aztai who got a collar with a new fix schedule, it will take GPS locations twice as often and hopefully we will be able to study his movements in more detail. He seems to be in good shape, well muscled and weighing in at 42kg with an empty stomach. Aztai is so experienced that he jumped away when he heard the dart gun fire (it makes a poff from the CO2 gas pressure), where there had been a nice spotted thigh 0.2 seconds earlier there was nothing but air when the dart reached.

Second cat was Khashaa, her collar had run out of battery and dropped off about a month ago. She had 2 big cubs with her that watched the whole procedure from a cliff above us. Khashaa weighed almost 42 kg, making her the heaviest female ever caught for research purposes. My brother has developed our trap surveillance system and installed a couple of microprocessors that analyzes the beeps from the trap transmitters. The system works great now, we haven’t had a single false alarm which means that as soon as the siren starts we are ready to go. Kullu, an Indian PhD student who usually works in the Himalayas, are here to do some work. He is the fastest climber I have seen, whenever the siren goes off he runs up and down the mountain to check which snare that has been tripped, doens’t take him more than a few minutes. We darted Khashaa about 25 minutes after she was trapped, that must be the fastest response time for any trapping research project.

Day after we collared Khashaa me and Carol went to pick up Tenger’s collar that had dropped off a few days earlier. The collar was lying far into a for me unknown mountain range. We had to drive on goat trails for a while to get there. Took us so long time that it got dark before we found our way back, spent four hours on the bike in total darkness before we found our camp. It is very hard to navigate when one can’t see the mountains.

Day after that we set out to check some kill sites. We lost our balance in loose gravel, it happened so fast that I didn’t have time to react and so we went down hard with the bike. Carol who was in the back got a few bruises and I injured my shoulder, still can’t move the upper arm much. Kullu had to go get an ATV and Miji to get us back home.

Yesterday we caught a new male. He weighed a little more than 30 kg, we think that he is one and a half years old and that it is one of Khashaa’s cubs, we saw tracks from a mother and cub at the trap site. From the GPS collars we should soon be able to tell if it is Khashaa’s cub or not. It would be great if it is, then we can follow him as he disperses away from her. Will be the first male disperser ever studied. I supervised and instructed Carol and Kullu but apart from that didn’t do much. Kind of nice to sit back for a change. Especially since that was our 15th snow leopard and with that we have collared as many individuals as all other studies combined.

Not much happening for me in a while, I’ll sit in camp and hope that the shoulder gets well soon.

Ready, set, go!

We have set a new record by getting camp in order, checking the trapping area and building four snares in just four days. I just finished cleaning the gers and mixing new drugs, tomorrow Tom and the others will arrive. Three months of office work at home with too much food and too little workout has left me with a rather increased waist measure and a much too decreased biceps measure. Am a little worried that I have already started with my ‘Cat trapper breakfast’ – two mugs of hot water with two tablespoons of Nescafé in each and a couple of painkillers on the side. I usually don’t start with that until later, could be a long field session…

I found pugmarks at seven snare sites yesterday, can’t tell how old they are since I just arrived and don’t know what the weather has been like but they must be fairly new. Man, I gotta say that the four snares look good, I put in a lot of effort in them. Will be a little sad if anything steps in them and messes them up. Well if it is a snow leopard I suppose it is OK.

Cheers,
Orjan

Towards Tost

For all you who share my view that long international flights in economy class are horribly boring I can recommend flying to Ulaan Bataar from Moscow. You will never know exactly what will happen, just that it will probably not be a regular flight. At the gate was ten or so Russian and Chech hunters in camouflage and bandanas, so drunk that they could barely stand up. Makes me sad to see, they represent nothing that I associate with hunting. I was surprised that they were allowed to board the plane and even more surprised that they were allowed to sit on the armrests and sing as we taxied for take-off. They behaved like annoying drunken old men with a lot of money (I’ve heard that it costs about 15 000 USD to shoot an ibex or Argali) for the rest of the flight. Speaking of the flight, my ticket said it was a direct flight but just before we entered Mongolia the plane landed in Krasmoyovsk (or something similar), apparently the fuel is cheaper in Russia so they decided to fill up the plane before landing in UB…
What is a scheduled flight plan against market economy and good bizznizz.

At landing the pilot announced that it was 3 degrees below zero, the Italian man next to me who wore shorts and a T-shirt looked quite baffled… He will learn the lesson that “guidebooks can be worth their price” the hard way.

On the way to UB our car collided with a truck, the other river had fallen asleep. Luckily Miji is a great driver and escaped a head on collision. That saved his life but he is still in hospital. I went to visit him and gave him postcards from many of the Swedes who has been in camp. Miji got so happy that he hugged me (which is a big thing for a Mongolian man). We all hope that he will get well soon, the time in Tost without him will be very empty.

Tomorrow I am leaving for camp, will have four days to set up camp and build snares before Tom and a TV-guy from ABC arrives together with Nadia, Kullu from India and a volunteer from Australia. As Tom leaves a group from WWF arrives. Will try to write but I expect to be busy until 22nd of October or so.