Project update - November 2007

Going to the Dogs

In the last Wildlife Matters I described a very high-tech method now being used to study snow leopards in Pakistan, GPS-satellite collars and remote infrared-triggered trap cameras to be exact. This time I want to show you that fancy and expensive gadgets are not the only way to learn about this amazingly secretive cat. A very low-tech method may in fact be the best way to answer a long-standing question about snow leopards -- "How many are there?"

First, why do we care so much about knowing the actual numbers of snow leopards? Isn't it enough to just know they are very rare and endangered? Shouldn't we just put our efforts into conservation and not spend time and money trying to count them? Valid questions and ones we often ask ourselves! But I can sum up the reason behind quest for population estimates with two words - measuring success. A lot of people, including readers of Wildlife Matters, entrust us with the task of conserving snow leopards in the wild. They do so through financial contributions, which fund our community-based conservation programs in places such as Mongolia, where DSWF has supported us for a decade. So WM readers and other donors have the right to ask us how we are doing, are we having a positive impact? So we really need to be able to show that snow leopards numbers are stable or growing in the places we work. Hence our keen interest in finally finding a way to accurately estimate snow leopard numbers!

But how? We never see the cats!

For years we have relied on counting snow leopard sign such as tracks, scrapes and faeces and using it as an indication of population size. We reasoned that if numbers went up in an area, so would the number of sign we saw there. For many reasons we have learned that this is not always the case. And the vagueness of the results was not assuring to us or our supporters. We have developed and tested high-tech methods, such as the automated cameras mentioned above, and also genetic-fingerprinting using hairs and faeces the cats leave in the field. These have merit, but are extremely expensive and may not always give the answers we need. But an innovative and potentially cost-effective method involving Man's Best Friend has us all very excited.

This summer the Snow Leopard Trust started a partnership with Working Dogs for Conservation Foundation (WDFC), a USA-based nonprofit organisation that trains dogs to assist with non-invasive research and conservation projects. Using their keen sense of smell, these "detection dogs" locate the faeces of specific species, then alert their trainers using signals such as barking or sitting.

WDCF has successfully employed this technique worldwide to find and track foxes, bears, and even endangered species such as the cheetah. These previous projects have shown that the dogs are experts at telling the scat of different species apart. But gave the dog trainers an additional challenge: can the dogs distinguish between the scat of different individual snow leopards?

In snow leopard range, wild animal faeces is not hard to come by-but determining what animal left it can be quite difficult, even for experts. In the past, researchers have collected samples that turned out to be from species other than snow leopards, such as wolf, fox and even marten. Expensive genetic tests are needed to first weed out these "non-snow leopard" faeces before additional genetic tests are used to identify individuals. If the detection dogs can identify scat by species and then by an individual cat, it may provide a faster and less expensive method to tell us how many snow leopards are out there!

The first step is to train the dogs to recognize snow leopard faeces, and then see if they can tell individual cat's faeces apart. We needed a lot of faeces for the training. Fortunately we have many zoos that support us and they provided over 200 faeces from known snow leopards to make this training possible. The dogs are learning rapidly and we are nearly ready for the next phase - giving them faeces from the wild to see how they do.

In July and August of this year I traveled to 2 sites in Mongolia where DSWF supported conservation projects are on-going. Climbing through the mountains for about 3 weeks, my Mongolian associates and I collected nearly 300 faeces that we think are probably from snow leopards. These have now been sent to the Working Dogs' base in California where the dogs will be asked give them a sniff and tell us what they find.

If the technique proves to be reliable and cost effective, it should enable us "count" snow leopards in each of our project areas. We can then track these numbers over time to determine the success of our conservation efforts. Perhaps one day soon a simple dog nose will confirm what we now believe, that our programs are helping snow leopard populations increase and ensuring their survival in the wild.

For more information about the Trust's research projects, please visit www.snowleopard.org. To learn more about Working Dogs for Conservation visit www.workingdogsforconservation.org

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