Snow Leopard Blog

All of us have been waiting in quiet anticipation to hear news from Orjan, not knowing when another snow leopard would be captured, collared and released. Perhaps you too have joined us in the silent hope that it would be a female—after all, we already have numerous males that we are tracking, but a female has yet to be tracked successfully in the Tost Mountains. Although we can’t share that news with you (yet), we are excited to announce that we collared another male on the 25th of February 2010. The snow leopard was captured, collared and released safely, and it has left us all intrigued about the number of males that are thriving in this landscape, overlapping their movement patterns within the 3500 km2 study site. Temporarily named M7 (light blue on the map), this male is a large cat and the 8th to join our GPS radio collar study. He weighs 39.5 kg, though lacks any scars on his face, giving an indication that he is a big, yet possibly young snow leopard. These scars usually testify to the battles that a cat may have fought over the years in order to carve or maintain a territory against existing territorial individuals. In the initial three days, M7 has seemed to utilize the eastern portion of what we refer to as Aztai’s home range.

Interestingly enough, this same night, on the 25th of February, Aztai (red) was caught again just 300-400 meters from where M7 was caught. Since his collar is still new, it was checked for any wear-and-tear and given that it was in good shape, the collar was kept on him. Aztai was released after Orjan took measurements, assessed his overall well-being and weighed him. He scored the highest of the three occasions that we have been able to weigh him: 36.5kg in August 2008, 42kg in June 2009, and 45kg on this February capture. Perhaps the biggest cat to be captured in the wild for research! That said, a loose cluster of GPS locations recorded up until the previous morning of 24th could possibly justify his increased weight. He seems to have been on a kill, and thus may be very heavy from feeding! Since the cluster is not very far from our base camp, and is accessible, we hope that Orjan will soon be able to visit the site to ground truth the location and answer questions about if it was a kill, and if so, what he was feeding on.

Based on the nearly 200 locations we have from Shonkhor, he seems to have settled himself into his home range which extends the length of the region between the Toson Bumba and Tost Mountains. He does continue to make periodic (and somewhat trademark) excursions from Toson Bumba to the Tost region, just about touching Aztai’s home range and then heading back into what appears to be the center of his home range.

We look forward to seeing how active Orjan’s next few weeks turn out to be as we enter into March!

Usually, we think of establishing protected areas as being a top-down phenomenon. But in snow leopard areas of northern India, the Snow Leopard Trust and its in-country partner, the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), are pursuing a different model. There, we are working with four communities to build protected areas from the grass roots up—literally. The communities have established grazing-free reserves, which protect select areas of pastureland to enable the recovery and restoration of the habitat, wild prey, and snow leopard populations.

The process begins, of course, with conscientious efforts to build rapport through ongoing research and conservation work, community meetings, and discussions with village leaders. In this area of the Himalayas, each community has traditional pastures for grazing their livestock. So, to establish a grazing-free reserve, the community signs a contract with us in which they agree to set aside some of their pasture area for a certain period of time, usually three to five years (after which time the contract may be renewed). The community appoints guards to monitor the reserve and makes sure no resource use takes place inside its boundaries. To compensate for the loss of the pasture area, the Trust and NCF provide financial assistance that can be used for development work by the village councils that govern each community.

Currently there are four villages participating—Kibber, Chichim, Hanle, and Losar—and roughly 50 square kilometers of pasture protected. The oldest grazing-free reserve, near the village of Kibber, was established in 1998, and has been an enormous ecological success. The reserve is now home to the region’s highest density of bharal, or blue sheep—a major snow leopard prey species. In the most recent census, in November 2009, we counted 405 bharal there! And at least four snow leopards have been spotted in the reserve by our infrared trap-cameras.

As the population of bharal in the Kibber reserve has increased, it has deflected some of the snow leopard predation pressure on a nearby population of ibex that uses the Chichim grazing-free reserve, which was established in 2005. For many years this ibex population remained around 20-25 individuals, but in the past few years, we have been counting close to 50 individuals. We also have evidence that the animals are now using the reserve year-round (instead of migrating to higher pastures during the summer)—another positive sign.

A third grazing-free reserve, near the village of Hanle, was established specifically to protect the endangered Tibetan gazelle. Last year, one of our staff observed seven gazelle fawns in and around the reserve, so we’re hopeful that the population will show further signs of recovery in the years ahead.

The newest reserve, near Losar, was just formed last year and is believed to harbor snow leopards, around 50 Himalayan ibex, red fox, Tibetan wolf, and possibly wild dog (dhole).

Our observations, while limited, also show that the plant diversity is higher inside the reserves, suggesting that the protection benefits all parts of the ecosystem. And because the pastures are normally not used particularly intensively—the communities usually follow a grazing rotation—taking some of the pastureland out of use has not resulted in degradation of the remaining grazing lands.

Of course, the grazing-free reserve program is only one aspect of what makes our conservation programs in India successful. We are also working with communities to, for example, improve herding practices to prevent losses to wild predators, implement a community-run (and partly community-funded) livestock insurance program to reimburse families for such losses when they do occur, and carry out a conservation education program. We are also hoping to diversify our programs even more in the future, exploring avenues to launch an ecotourism program in the Kibber area.

We are extremely excited to report an uplink from Tsagaan (white). This single data point lets us know that he is not far from where our researchers are operating right now.

Aztai (green) and Shonkhor (red) covered an average of at least 7 km and 6 km per day respectively. Since we do not know the movement pattern between two locations, these GPS maps are only indicative of the minimum distance that the snow leopards may have covered in the specific time. Aztai’s locations show an interesting ‘zigzag’ pattern of movement towards the Eastern and Western edges of his home range. He seems to have visited the areas of his home range that overlap with that of Tsagaan at least three times. At 0100 hours, the morning of the 17th of February, Tsagaan was at the very edge of his home range in an area that overlaps with that of Aztai. At 0700 hours that same morning, Aztai was shown making a 5 km deep ‘invasion’ into Tsagaan’s territory! Fascinating. We have no uplinks from Tsagaan after the 17th, and Aztai’s next location uplink was only on the 19th. What happened in between is unknown as of now, but we hope to learn more as we replace the collars and retrieve the complete location dataset from the current collar. It astounds us to imagine what interesting tales will unfold.

As is evident from the three new locations that uplinked from his collar, Shonkhor was also on the move. He appears to have traveled close to the southeastern-most border of his home range, not far from the area where Aztai’s home range meets his. The next step can be determined from the uplinks: he traveled back into the center of his own territory. So many questions come to mind: Was Aztai making such broad ‘zigzag movements’ in an attempt to defend his territory from these two other males? Is there a female in oestrus nearby that might be influencing these males and their movements? As planned for the upcoming field season, Orjan is in pursuit of any nearby female snow leopards that we might collar in order to improve our understanding of these interactions between snow leopards, which is currently a mystery to the scientific community.

For more information on how collaring works, please visit our FAQ page.

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

It’s been two hectic weeks in camp. Bayara (Country Program Director for Mongolia), Pursee (Mongolian biologist), and Charu (Science & Conservation Director) arrived a little more than a week ago. To our aid, the last week has been much warmer, a lot of the snow has disappeared, and it’s been easier to navigate the terrain. Bayara is really the person who makes everyday life out here so smooth, and she takes an excellent care of me. Sometimes I think that she takes too good care of me and spoils me a little. But without the staff’s advice, planning, help with logistics, and all of you who donate or take interest in the study, I would make quite a sorry sight out here, and we would probably not have any cats collared yet. Charu said that we must be among the luckiest people on earth to have the jobs we have. I can only agree. To spend one day in the sunshine, up in the mountains, studying wildlife–it’s an experience that can’t be described. It’s also challenging to study a cat in this terrain I can tell you…

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

We arrived in the Gobi about a week ago. All the equipment and gers (large Mongolian tents) have been stored in a tiny house since last summer, and the first thing we did was to locate all the things we needed. In two days time, we had leveled the ground for the floor, built, furnished and cleaned the ger. I’ll admit that I didn’t help much; I felt as if I was mostly in the way. I sorted all the equipment and connected the cables for solar power and all electronics instead. It’s quite amazing how fast Mongolians can set up a ger (once the floor is leveled it only takes three-four hours), and that in two days time we can go from “nothing” to a fully functional research camp.

There is a lot of snow in Mongolia this winter. I’ve heard that millions of livestock are dying, on the way to camp we saw piles of dead animals. There are almost no herders in the mountains around camp and the canyons that I want to find snow leopards in are filled with 10-30 cm of snow.

And if snow leopards knew what their species’ name means and could vote, I think they would ask us to change it. They don’t seem to like snow…

Tom told me this long ago, I thought it was because their fur is yellowish-grayish and that they are too obvious in snow. But during the last days when I have hiked around I have found fresh tracks from snow leopards four times (I think it is the same individual that has spent some time close to my camp). I have tracked the leopard and it is very interesting to see how much care it takes not to put its paws in deep snow. It didn’t walk in the canyons, rather it stayed on the mountainsides and whenever it had to cross an area of deep snow, it made sure to find a passage with rocks to walk on.

Today is Tsagaan Sar (Buddhist new year). We had planned to visit with two families, but it is so cold that our Russian van refused to start. Marhaan, my assistant, has tried to thaw out the engine with a blow torch (!) without any luck so far.

Given the erratic uplinks from Shonkhor’s collar (red), we had a rare moment this week with the recording of a cluster, possibly depicting a kill site or resting spot! On the 8th and 9th of February, we received a cluster of three locations within 50 meters of each other. Unfortunately there were no uplinks following that until the 15th when he had moved, and therefore we are unable to identify how long Shonkhor remained at the site and why. The good news is that Orjan is in the field now and the camp is set up and ready. As told by the herders, the winter this year has been remarkably cold. Most areas are covered under a thick layer of snow, and this makes our field work a bit more challenging for now. Even a visit to investigate the cluster points from Shonkhor’s collar will depend on snow, potentially limiting access. Aztai (green) patrolled his home range, with several uplinks showcasing his movement. He spent a fair amount of time within 5 km from base camp and was on the move, apparently not on any large kill this week.

Since 2007, the Snow Leopard Trust and its partner in India, the Nature Conservation Foundation, have conducted three-day camps for middle and high school children in the Spiti Valley of the Himalayas. Over the past three summers, about 430 children (and 30 teachers) from 15 schools have participated. The experience of living in tents and being in the wilderness is exciting for most students—very different from their usual school experience indoors. Many say that learning about plants and animals around them (about which they knew very little) has made them feel proud of their natural and cultural heritage and take more interest in preserving it.

Here are some images from the camps, and what some of the participants had to say about their experience:

“I saw and learned a lot in this camp, which I didn’t know earlier. I learned that each creature has a right to exist on earth. I’ll tell my fellow villagers to look after our pastures.” – Rinchen Dolma

“Pastures are not only for humans and their livestock, but also for wildlife.” – Chhering Dolker (Kibber High School)

“In this camp, I really liked the activity of sound maps. Earlier, I had heard many sounds, but here, sitting at one quiet place, I got to listen to the breeze, flowing stream and various bird calls.” – Kunzom Butith (Government Sr. Secondary School, Kibber)

“I learned that nature is full of surprises and peaceful…we are so lucky to be born in the Himalaya… I’ll remember for my whole life that we went to this camp.” – Lobzang Tandup

“This three-day nature camp has been a great educational experience for both students and teachers…the positive effects could last for many years to come, even a lifetime.” – Griffen Schutt (Teacher, Highlander School)

Aztai (green) has communicated 740 locations ever since he was first collared two years ago, and then re-collared last year in June. Every week, his locations unravel more mysteries about snow leopards than were ever known. This week, we are intrigued by what appear to be two “clusters” separated by a distance of only 2.5 km and by less than 2 days. Clusters are a series of locations that occur within a few meters from each other. This clustering of points one-on-top of the other usually indicates that the cat is staying in one place. At this time we can only speculate about the reason, and in this case, we are most intrigued by the fact that there are two clusters such a short time and distance apart. Perhaps Aztai made two kills in less than four days? Perhaps after having made a kill himself, he then scavenged on a kill made by another snow leopard? Could he simply have been resting, or is there more to it than what we know and understand about these cats at this time? We hope to learn more about this and these “cluster situations” in the coming weeks by having our research team implement “ground truthing” of these cluster locations very soon after the cat leaves the area.

We received three uplinks from Shonkhor (red) last week, telling us no more than that he is within his home range. Whether he finished his expedition to Aztai’s home range or came back mid-way is something we hope to learn once his collar is retrieved and the data stored onboard is recovered.

Orjan is reaching the Tost Mountains and will build his satellite camp about 5 km East of our base camp to begin this season’s collaring. While Tsagaan, Supermom and Saikhan are the primary and hopeful targets, we are prepared to be surprised by an unknown snow leopard should they appear instead.

from The Japan Times (photo courtesy of Nagoya Zoo):

The world’s oldest snow leopard born in captivity died Monday at Higashiyama Zoo at the age of 21 years and 9 months, the facility said.

The female snow leopard, Patora, was born at the zoo in Nagoya in 1988 and gave birth to three cubs. She fell ill earlier this month and was given antibiotics Saturday but died of natural causes early Monday.

Since a snow leopard in the United States died in 2007 at the age of 22 years and 5 months, Patora had been the oldest known snow leopard, according to the zoo.

“She had a beautiful black and white coat,” a zoo worker said. “She had avid fans.”

The species, a relatively large cat with a thick coat, lives in high mountain areas of Central Asia. Its population has dropped significantly due to intense hunting and is designated as endangered.

There was a lot of action from the South Gobi this week. Uplinks from Aztai (green) continued as usual, but the most exciting news was to receive data from Tsagaan (white) and Shonkhor (red). After almost three months of silence, we received two data uplinks from Tsagaan. He appears to be within his home range, about 5 km east of our base camp. Shonkhor also seems to have returned to his home range, although in the last location that we received he appears to have headed straight towards Aztai’s home range. It will be interesting to see if he returns or continues his expedition. If you take a look at Aztai’s recent movement patterns, you will notice that he made visits to many points along the outermost border of his home range – seemingly doing border patrol checks! Based on the data that we have from Aztai’s collar, his home range seems to be fairly well defined, though he does make regular expeditions to investigate new areas.

While we can only speculate, there is a possibility that after several weeks of near silence from Tsagaan and Shonkhor, the collars may have accidentally turned upside down with their satellite phone transmitters now facing the sky; hence this array of uplinks. We hope to learn more once the collars are retrieved.

Orjan has left for the field. His goals include focusing first on attempting to recapture the known males in order to replace their collars. Once we have the collars in hand, we can download all the data points that were not able to transmit to the satellite. After replacing the collars, he will follow the trails of females using information from photo trap cameras. The females continue to elude Orjan, as far as snow leopards are concerned, but we are hopeful that this will change in 2010.

For more information about our new 3-D range maps, visit our FAQ page.