After an adventurous road trip, Snow Leopard Trust Field Scientist Örjan Johansson is back in the base camp of our Long Term Ecological Study in Mongolia’s South Gobi – where the real challenges were only just beginning!
The road trip to camp was rather eventful as we ended up in both thick fog and snowfall at the same time. The roads here are dangerous to travel. As we left the paved road and started following the dirt tracks south the fog got thicker, for a while everything was white – couldn’t tell where the sky ended and the ground began. With no visible tracks, I have no idea how our driver Miji found his way – had I been driving, we would have ended up in Russia. Still, somehow we reached camp. We spent the first days getting the ger in order and sorting all the capture gear.
Once that was done, we started hiking around in the canyons, looking for fresh snow leopard signs. We found fresh tracks from a snow leopard in a canyon nearby, as well as a reasonable amount of scrapes and scent marks in the area. It doesn’t look like there is a whole lot of activity in the area, but we should get a couple of cats at least. We finished building snares six days ago and now we have thirteen of them set and waiting for a cat. Since then, not much has happened; we picked up Lasya’s collar a few days ago. It had dropped on the exact date it was scheduled to, 18 months after I deployed it. That’s German precision for you.
Mechanic Moments
The last days we have tried to get the vehicles in working condition. By changing parts between the two ATVs and the two bikes we now have one ATV and one motorbike that work. Miji and I were working on the motorbike for several hours. At a point, we had most of the bike in pieces, including the fuel line and carburator. This is a big thing for me, as I didn’t even know what a carburator was when I got here four years ago. Miji is good with engines and I have learned quite a bit about the bikes, so together we managed to get the carburator to work again. I explained in my Mongolian “this-say-gas-now- (to) this” and so on.
A Long Ride Home
Dr. Byron Weckworth, Regional Biologist for Panthera, my research partner, had a fever today so I set out for the first kill site searches on my own. The weather is pretty cold, Miji has piled up a gigantic amount of different kind of fuel for his stove. He says that it will be the coldest winter in a long time. Not sure how he knows, but so far he is correct. Anyways, soon after I had visited the first successful hunting location (often referred to as a kill site), which was a rather big Argali male that Ariun, one of the cats we’re following with a GPS collar, had caught, it started snowing. I got to the second and third kill sites, but on my way back from there, the snow picked up rather dramatically. In the end I couldn’t see more than 2-300 meters.
Navigating your way out of the mountains is sort of dependent upon seeing the mountains, otherwise there is no way of telling where the valleys and passes are. It didn’t worry me too much, until I got back to the bike and it refused to start. I hadn’t fine-tuned the carburator and now it didn’t want to work in the cold. It was about 30 km to camp so no way that I would make it back on foot before it got dark. I was preparing mentally to spend the night in the mountains, wouldn’t be fun, but I’d be able to deal with it. Though, at last the engine started. I guess Yamaha doesn’t joke when they write that only authorized dealers should work on the carburators…
It’s difficult to ride in snow because you don’t see the holes and rocks, but a couple of hours later, after navigating the dirt bike through snow and snowdrifts, I reached camp. Now, as I type, my hands have finally thawed out.
Tomorrow we will see if we have to dig the snare equipment out of the snow and hopefully we will soon catch and collar a cat.
Until then, enjoy!
Örjan
Örjan Johansson is a Ph.D. student at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). He is the field scientist in our Long Term Ecological Study about snow leopards in South Gobi, Mongolia. Örjan’s groundbreaking research is generously supported by Nordens Ark Zoo in Bohuslän, Sweden, and by Kolmården Zoo, in Norrköping, Sweden.
This study is a joint project of PANTHERA, Snow Leopard Trust and Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation in cooperation with the Mongolia Ministry of Nature, Environment and Tourism, and the Mongolia Academy of Sciences.