New snow leopard collared
1st April 2010
There’s some amazing news from the DSWF supported Snow Leopard Trust research centre in Mongolia where a new leopard has joined the ongoing studies.
After a short winter break lead field biologist, Orjan Johannson, returned to the centre and on February 25th, near midnight, placed a GPS radio collar on a large male. Provisionally called M7, he is the 8th snow leopard to be collared as part of the team’s long-term study and, at 39.5kg he is a large cat but with little scarring to his face - often a sign of territorial fights - M7 may be quite young. M7’s initial collar transmissions show that he has been in the eastern portion of veteran snow leopard, Aztai’s territory.
“Aztai was the first cat collared in 2008,” explains managing director of field programmes, Tom McCarthy. “And the steady stream of data transmitted form his collar has started to paint a vivid picture of snow leopard ranges in southern Mongolia.”
In an exciting twist of timing, Orjan also recaptured Aztai on the night of February 25th just a few hundred metres from where he had collared M7. A general check showed that Aztai was the heaviest ever recorded and at 45kg is perhaps the biggest snow leopard to be captured in the wild for research. A cluster of GPS locations recorded at the time suggests that Aztai may have been on a kill and was therefore heavy from feeding - something the team were keen to follow-up on.
M7 has now joined four other snow leopards ‘on air’ - Aztai, Tsagaan, Shonkor and Saikhan - with data showing an interesting overlap in their movements. The work of the research team is to now try and understand these movements and to collar a female to improve understanding of these interactions. To-date, over 1,408 GPS locations have been recorded showing home range sizes from as low as 185km2 up to 1,628 km2. Aztai’s core home range is just 257km2 but this balloons to 771km2 when his random forays are included.
“In the wake of the sad shooting of Longtail, one of the collared snow leopards by a herder defending his livestock, the Snow Leopard Trust and DSWF are working to increase conservation efforts,” adds Tom McCarthy. “In addition to the ongoing enterprise programme – helping herders sell woollen handicrafts – we have also piloted a livestock insurance programme to compensate herders for animals lost to snow leopard predation. Both programmes are based on helping herders increase and /or stabilize their incomes to engender greater tolerance of snow leopards.”
Coupled with the teams increasing understanding of the snow leopard gathered from the collaring study, they can now show how snow leopards overlap with human settlements and ensure that the relevant programmes are introduced to the most vulnerable communities.
For more about DSWF's work with the Snow Leopard Trust click here
