Snow Leopard Blog

(Photo courtesy of Steve Tracy)

Do snow leopards enjoy the smell of Calvin Klein cologne? Judging by the way the cats at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo have reacted to a CK-scented trap camera, the answer is a resounding “yes.” The Trust will make use of the “cologne technique” this fall in Mongolia, where we hope to draw more cats to camera sites.

Read the full Seattle Times article and enjoy the humorous pictures.

Partnerships with communities living in snow leopard habitat are key to our conservation efforts and this year our partners in Mongolia are facing unprecedented challenges due to the harshest winter in decades.  Over the winter herders in Mongolia lost more than 8.14 million livestock according the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, and light Industry.  That is 18.5 percent of the total livestock in the country and the worst loss of livestock since records have been kept.

Thanks to our generous donors, led by Stephen Sparrow of the Snow Leopard Vodka company, we were able to provide immediate aid this spring to those hardest hit.  Mr. Sparrow was able to visit Mongolia recently and met with herders in the area as well as visited our long-term study site where he was lucky enough to see Aztai who was patrolling his territory near the base camp:

“Visiting the Tost valley in the South Gobi was a real thrill for me. The local herder families I met were so warm and friendly and whilst they live in some of the harshest terrain on the planet their kindness to their neighbours and visitors (like me!) was quite extraordinary. The work Bayara’s team is doing through the snow leopard enterprise and livestock insurance projects is really putting snow leopard conservation at the heart of the South Gobi nomadic communities. It was wonderful to hear from one of the herders who had lost livestock in the high mountains in the winter to undoubtedly a snow leopard attack that there was no way he would now resort to a retribution killing. He was proud to share his home with one of the world’s most beautiful animals and proud that people from so far away took an interest in the snow leopard and the people who shared their habitat.

For me the whole trip was quite humbling. The science based research work that Orjan and Koustubh are leading with the long term research project will be so crucial to build compelling support for snow leopard conservation from local governments and NGO’s and the wider general public. The life blood of the Snow Leopard’s future has to undoubtedly rely on the local herder communities who share their habitat. The amazing work that Bayara and her team do with these truly delightful people is so crucial for the species’ survival and a cause I personally will make a life long commitment to support.”

The Snow Leopard Friendly Vaccination Program was evaluated in 2008 and found mature enough for expansion. We surveyed the north and eastern part of Chitral District, North West Frontier Province (NWFP), particularly the valleys of Laspu, Yarkun, Mastuj and Torkho. They not only cover substantial snow leopard range, but also provide connections with Gilgit and Ghizer Districts in Gilgit-Baltistan (formerly known as the Northern Areas), and with the Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan. These valleys have been ignored by conservation initiatives despite their remarkable wildlife potential and interesting geographical setting.

The vaccination program aims to reduce livestock mortality due to diseases, improve the productivity of the stock, and link those benefits to snow leopard conservation. The program was initiated in Kuju in 2003 and replicated to Parsan in 2005. In 2007, five more villages were included in the program and training was imparted to the selected community members.

With support from Blue Moon Fund support and Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund, the program was expanded in 2009 to five more villages: Drungagh, Ujnu, Rech, Balim, and Sor-Laspur situated in the northeast and northwest of Chitral District.

Livestock Vaccination in the Existing Sites 
Vaccines against Hemorrhagic Septicemia (HS), Anthrax Spore (AS), Foot & Mouth Disease (FMD) and Enterotoxaemia ET) were distributed among the communities as per vaccination calendar. The communities were briefed to deposit their share of the vaccine cost as per agreement. CLEWs successfully completed all the campaigns. The CLEWs were provided technical support by the field staff of Livestock Department during the campaigns. A total of 6,458 animals were immunized against fatal disease.

Livestock Vaccination in the New Sites 
Livestock vaccination campaigns against Caprine Contagious Pleuro-pneumonia (CCPP) and Foot & Mouth Disease (FMD) were initiated in the five newly selected villages. Vaccination formats were developed and provided to the CLEWs. All the campaigns were successful and people were keen and supportive towards the program.

In total, the program vaccinated 15,932 animals. Dr. Nawaz, the program PI, has asked his field staff to collect information on the number of households and number of livestock that did not participate. He anticipates there could be as many as 1,000 animals that were not vaccinated that might join the program in 2010.

(Photo of Aztai by Stephen Sparrow, courtesy of SLT/Panthera)

We’re in the third year of our long-term snow leopard study and it’s been a busy field season. In June, our crew installed 40 automatic camera traps in the mountains, at locations such as saddles or steep canyons that are used avidly by snow leopards. The cameras will stay in the field for two months and photograph any animal that trips their field of view. Analysis will follow once the pictures are retrieved. Using trap cameras (remote digital cameras with infrared sensors) is one of the most reputed methods across the world to estimate the abundance of cryptic animals, such as snow leopards.

In addition to the trap cameras, we also explored other ways to monitor snow leopard populations. This summer, our field crew managed to survey over 40 sites to estimate snow leopard occupancy using indirect evidences of their presence, such as scrapes.

Concurrently, one of our Masters students, Nadia, interviewed herders in the Tost region in a project that will ultimately help us understand how and why herders use snares to hunt predators. Two known snow leopards were trapped in snares last year, and by gaining a better understanding of the problem we hope to develop sustainable solutions for the future. Thank you to the Nysether Family Foundation for funding Nadia’s research.

In addition to all this, our GPS radio collaring study is going strong as we follow the movements of 7 snow leopards. Make sure to read our latest update and find out about our newest cat—a female named Zaraa.

(Map Courtesy of SLT/Panthera)

We are happy to announce that the collars worn by Aztai, Khavar and Zaraa continue to work fabulously, uploading up to 80% of the scheduled locations; those of Shonkhor, Tsagaan, Saikhan and Devekh seem to be under-performing. The good news is that Orjan will be returning to the field shortly (he is on holiday), perhaps some time late in August and will work on replacing these collars.

The most exciting set of locations have come understandably from Zaraa (yellow stars), the lone female we have managed to follow so far. She is already covering an area larger than 200 sq km. We don’t know enough yet to say if that is her home range size. She might be using a larger area, a proportion of which is what we seen so far in the past two months! Zaraa has been on feeding sites several times in the past two months, confirming her well being. Interestingly, she has been the first cat we have followed to have ventured in what we call the ‘badlands’, an area we wouldn’t expect for snow leopards. She was in the middle of the badlands for a few hours where we received two locations on 22nd June. Other than this, her collar locations show that she seems to use habitat in the southern edge of the Tost Mountains extensively.

Apart from a recent sortie that Khavar (purple dots) made further south around the 8th of July, he continues to overlap with Aztai’s home range (green dots). The extent of their home range overlap is more than 90%, which is an exciting and informative piece of information. Aztai has been ruling over this territory ever since Bayartai died in the end of 2008. He seems to have reduced the frequency at which he used to make the expeditions outside his home range earlier, indicating perhaps that either he is too busy patrolling or defending it from intruders, or he is content with the resources available within.

Shonkhor’s trademark expeditions (red dots) to Aztai’s home range continue and we are still receiving information from his collar, though intermittently.

Devekh’s collar (blue dots) has been under-performing and we have received only 6 locations from it since May 2010. It is a collar that Orjan will be replacing on a priority when he returns in August. However, from the six locations that have uplinked, we know for sure that he is still roaming between the southern parts of Tost, to the north-eastern rugged mountain range in Toson Bumba, adjoining the Badlands.

Read past Follow the Cats updates to see how the study has unfolded.