What a busy year it has been in our Long Term Ecological Study in Mongolia! Our field scientists managed to find wild cubs for the first time ever, collared and tracked various snow leopards across the South Gobi and watched cats they had first met as tiny cubs years ago grow up! Thanks to the …
Tag: Zaraa
M9 Is All Grown Up
We are excited to report that M9 dispersed from his mother Khashaa in mid-April! The only other snow leopard we have known during dispersal was Zaraa, who left her mother Tenger in February of last year. A few weeks after M9 went off on his own, field researcher Orjan located his first big kill, a …
A Journey Through The Badlands
During the week of May 19, 2011, the young snow leopard Zaraa journeyed from our study area in the Tost Mountain region, 45 km. (~27 miles) north, across the Toson Bumba Mountain chain and all the way to another nearby chain called the Nemegt Mountains. What makes this northern trek so interesting is not the …
Zaraa's Walk to the Border
Koustubh, our Regional Field Biologist, sent us this great update recently: Zaraa has done something really exciting this week… On the 19th, she set out South, all the way to China for an expedition through an area that seems to have no mountains at all!!! She went into the open steppe from the area that …
How snow leopards 'leave the nest'
We’ve been really excited to follow two female snow leopard: Tenger and her daughter Zaraa and now, for the first time, we are watching this snow leopard cub ‘leave the nest!’ The timing of Zaraa’s apparent separation from her mother is occurring around the time of year when we believe snow leopards begin breeding. This makes us speculate whether …
Tenger and Her Daughter Zaraa Part Ways
Since late last autumn, the Snow Leopard Trust has been following a Mother-Daughter pair through our long-term ecological study in Mongolia. Zaraa, who is a little less than two years old, has been traveling so close to her mother Tenger that their GPS location markers are often times on top of each other. In the …
A Snow Leopard Romance for Valentine's Day
With Tsagaan fitted with an improved GPS tracking collar this past September, we have learned a remarkable amount of information on his recent whereabouts. His home range overlaps with that of Khashaa, Tenger and Zara (the three females in our research study) and his GPS locations show him visiting all of them more than once …
New Snow Leopard is Zaraa's Mom!
Great news: On October 15, 2010 Orjan placed a GPS radio collar on a female snow leopard! For now, she is temporarily being called F4. She joins fellow females, Zaraa and Khashaa, as well as six males (Aztai, Tsagaan, Shonkhor, Saikhan, Devekh, and Khavar) to become the ninth snow leopard in our study! F4 is …
"James Bond" is a Female: The Elusive New Cat Joins Our Study
Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who works at the base camp of our long-term research project in Mongolia. These are his adventures… At 03:19 (on October 15, 2010) our trap surveillance system alarm went off. This system, with its siren, makes me feel a little like a fire-fighter. In true “fire-fighter manner,” I jumped …
Follow the Cats Update: Zaraa Enters the Badlands
(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 …