Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who bought a one-way ticket to Mongolia to work at the base camp of our long-term research project. These are his adventures…
Today we moved and built the new camp. I checked our cameras again and there were no snow leopard pictures on them, so in two weeks we have not gotten a single picture of an un-collared individual. Could be a coincidence and tonight we might get tons of pictures of snow leopards but the cameras are just ten km from Base camp and I will move back here in June when there will be more staff from SLT living here.
A couple of years ago a researcher at Grimso Research Station told me that to understand how individuals of the species I studied behaved and thought (at that time wolves) I had to observe them. If I couldn’t observe the wolves, then I should observe dogs and combine the knowledge that I gained with information from snow tracking, collars, where they chose day-rests etc. In the case with snow leopards, I have studied Friday [the base camp housecat], searched for tracks and signs of the snow leopards, where their prey is abundant looked at trap camera pictures and so on. I think that I have gotten a little bit towards understanding them.
So I have put on my snow leopard glasses to try and to see the world as they do and then put on the snow leopard thinking cap to move through the world as they do. Or maybe rather as they move through the flat parts of their world. I have no ambition to start rock-climbing vertical walls.
The last week I have spent running up and down mountains and canyons to find the best collaring sites. It’s a strenuous job since it’s not enough to find a good canyon, I still have to check all the neighboring canyons to make sure that they are not better.
I have found five really good sites. One of them is the best that I have ever seen. In a couple of days, my girlfriend Emma will come here and stay for almost three weeks. It will be so great to see her again. I’ve been here for a while and will not go home until the end of summer. Miji and I will go to Dalandzadgad to pick her up. I have some errands to do in town and I thought it could be nice to take a shower since the last one I took was on the 29th of January. But who’s counting days…