Cat Call

The Base Camp

Aloud siren tore through the frozen night, waking us. It was not the alarm clock, but was louder than that and piercing! Only after Orjan had switched off the siren did we realise what it was.
It was 11 in the night and we were in the midst of the Tost Mountains of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, cooped in a Ger (a Mongolian nomadic tent), braving the temperature hovering between -10 degree celsius at night and 4 degree celsius during the day. The mountains here are not very high; the highest summit rises only a little above 2,500 m. The terrain is rugged in a few parts and gentle and rolling at others.

Orjan Johansson, our project head, a fellow PhD student from Sweden and I had laid out snares to catch snow leopards and put satellite collars on them in an effort to study them. The siren indicated that one of the snares had caught something. Very likely, a snow leopard!

Orjan and I searching for a snow leopard kill site!

Having so far collared 14 cats over the last three years in this region, Orjan has become a veteran of sorts. The third member of our team is Carol, a vet from Australia, volunteering with Orjan. The last three years saw me studying the snow leopard in India and now I am here to pick up tricks on collaring the cats and working on a collaborative project on the Ibex – the primary prey of the snow leopard here.
It took us an entire day to drive here from Dalanzadgad, the nearest town with a sizeable population. We did not come across a single vehicle on the way: just the never ending desert peppered with rocky hills. Stocked-up to last a few months, the three of us shared the circular interiors of the Ger with a fireplace, a stove and a whole bunch of technical equipment like binoculars, cameras, GPS, computers, etc.

Ibex, the primary prey of the snow leopard

This was to be our home for the next three and half months. I wondered how long we could last. This self-imposed confinement in wilderness has a way of making people cranky and grumpy. Except the snow leopard collaring, which is the most exciting and adventurous activity, life in the desert threatens to get very boring and mundane. Life here revolves in cycles of three days. Every third day one of us drives 3 kms to an old and abandoned Soviet well to fill up our water canisters. We make sure everything in the Ger and around are alright, check thesolar panels/batteries and indulge in shooting darts at times, while all along waiting for the fire-truck siren!
I am ready to find out which one of the 14 snares has triggered. Visiting every individual snare and physically checking them would be time consuming. It would disturb the surroundings and could scare away any cats that we could potentially collar. While Orjan readies the dart, drugs and the dart gun, Carol fills up the thermos with hot water and readies the vet supplies.
Soon we are riding two All-Terrain Vehicles on our way to the snare that has been triggered. Stopping 200 mts. away from the snare we cut out the engines while Orjan barks the instructions at us. As we cautiously approach the snare we can see two eyes shining in the light of my headlamp. A snow leopard indeed! Noticing us, it tries to hide behind a rock but the snare cable forces him back. Giving up the struggle, the animal sits down with its side towards us. We can see that it is a largish animal with a collar around its neck. Of the 14 leopards that Orjan has collared so far, five still carry the collars. Of them three frequent this area often. Two of them are females: Khasha (Jade in English) and Tengger (Sky). Both have two cubs each.

Orjan having darted the animal in the thigh, we quietly move away. Minutes later, it is fast asleep. It is Aztai or the Lucky One – it is the eighth time that he has stepped into a snare.
Freeing the animal from the snare and getting him to flat open ground is our first task. Carol very skillfully pulls out a syringe of blood sample from Aztai. This will provide us with vital information on the prevalence of diseases and allow us to build a genetic tree of snow leopards in the region. The collar still has six months of battery left but we decide to put a new one, unwilling to lose the opportunity! While he sleeps, we monitor his body temperature, heart rate, pulse, breathing, blood oxygen levels, etc.

Collaring our first snow leopard of the season

The duration the animal is to stay immobilised has to be carefully checked, for the sub-zero temperature of the surroundings could be fatal. A drugged animal’s body temperature could easily drop and it could suffer from hypothermia!
Snow leopards are one of the least known and studied large cats of the world. It was first photographed in the seventies by George Schaller. In fact, so scanty is the information about them that that they are, often, aptly referred to as ‘the ghosts of the mountains’. Our research is a maiden attempt to provide insights into this elusive predator’s life and help manage the few remaining natural habitats left in the mountain ranges of Central Asia, which are opening up for mining activities. The satellite collars are now telling us how much space these animals need, how far they go in search of mates, where the cubs go when they are old enough, etc. If the cats spend unusually long hours at any one of the places it’s understood that they had made a kill, like in Aztai’s case. He was at one location for three days gorging on a large ibex, we learnt later.
Though this area has been designated a Local Protected Area, it is increasingly threatened by the activities of mining companies that have procured licenses in mineral exploration. Ninja mining, the illegal, open-cast mining for gold, is also another activity that plagues the area. The border with China, the sink for all the minerals of Mongolia, is barely 40 kms away from here.

Signs of poaching

With the last screw bolted tight on Aztai's new collar we are ready to wake him up. Orjan loads a new drug in the syringe and administers two shots; one on the shoulder and the other on the thigh. We move away, leaving it to shake off its dizziness and disappear into the depths of the mountains!
Now, every weekend, we will be privy to the information of Aztai’s movement, like the other four collared ones. The collar sends the exact geographical coordinates of every five hours to a satellite circling the earth. The satellite relays data to our office in the USA which a staff member compiles and emails to us on our satellite phone.
A few days after Aztai, we are again woken up by the fire-truck siren! This time it is early dawn. It is Khasha's one-and-a half year old cub! Although young and still dependant on its mother, he is almost as big as any other adult snow leopard. Another smooth operation for 40 minutes and he walks off into the rising sun! Within two days that satellite confirms that he is back with his mother Khasha. Quite an engaging assignment this is!

A Winters day on the Mongolian Steppe: Hustai National Park

 

I find it hard to describe what the word endless really means. Its the feeling that you have when you lie down on you back and look at the dark sky and start feeling like you are actually falling into the sky. And I find the word endless very apt to describe the Mongolian steppe. It just goes on and on for ever! If you tried to keep looking at the horizon you will probably feel some kind of horizontal vertigo! 

This trip changed my perception of the Steppe. It went from being a sea of grass to a sea of snow

 Hustai National park is about two hours drive away from Ulaan Baatar. The famous attraction is the Prezwalski's Horse, the last remaining wild horse of the planet. Locally called the Takhi. It is in fact incorrect to call it the last remaining wild horse because it actually went extinct from the wild in the 60's. In 1992, 16 takhi were returned to the Khustain Nuruu National Park, and a captive breeding and re-introduction program was started. Such experiments are now being carried out for many species. Zoo's around the world claim such programs as their contribution to Wildlife Conservation. Current a similar mega project is underway in India where we are trying to bring back the cheetah that Went extinct in India in the 40's. 

A takhi! Image by Jeff Kubina from Wikimedia commons

The day began well for us. I was accompanied by Natsuko, a Japanese anthropology student and her two friends. After a nice two hours drive which felt like sailing in the snow we were welcomed in the park by two Golden Eagles at the park entrance. immediately followed by two Saker Facons. The park has a very good information center and restaurant. The showed a movie about the entire program. After paying an small entry fees we were accompanied by a guide inside the park. A few minutes drive and we spotter our first Takhi!

The Takhi grazing in the Hustai National Park

Seeing a wild horse in Mongolia has been my childhood dream. The fulling of this dream was very calming for me. Domestication of the horse is an important chapter in the history of civilization and to see that the ancestors of the horse was a very touching experience. This is the place where we are actually acting on our mistakes and re-wilding what was lost. I was also surprised to know that Mongolia welcomed this project and declared the Takhi as their national animal. Mongolia has a whole suit of charismatic species such as the Marco Polo Sheep, snow leopard, ibex but they chose to have the takhi as their symbol.

The endangered black vukture

 
The other surprise of the day was seeing the red deer in the in the middle of the steppe. I have always associated deer with forests but here the red deer were occupying the exact same landscape that I would have expected an argali or a blue sheep to occupy in the Himalaya. The day came to close with some brillient sightings of the black vulture, a globally endangered vulture. Also I did not fail to notice the large amount of livestock around and inside the park. It is not yet clear to me as to the impact of the livestock on the wild ungulates but clearly with over 270 takhi, the project is a success.

About 500 goat and sheep grazing just on the edge of the park

 

Nostalic on New Years Morning!

Only for the second time I find myself in the field on the first day of the new year. January 1st 2008 I was in Spiti doing my Master's thesis in Spiti Valley in the Himalaya! January 1st 2012 I find myself in Ulaan Baatar doing research for my PhD! But unfortunately, the only similarity between four years ago and today is the freezing temperature; -31C as if today morning! But the cold temperature has brought back a flurry of memories from 4 years ago.

January 1st 2008, Takpa climbing up towards Kanamo

Four years ago on this very day Takpa and I were attempting to climb Mt. Kanamo. The summit of this peak stands tall at 5994m. The climb itself was easy but the temperature was excruciatingly cold. Today in Ulaan Baatar, although it is equally cold outside I am sitting in the cozy comfort of my centrally heated room with Internet, chatting with my folks back home. Have I lost the will to step out in the cold and do something adventures? may be not! I recently climbed the highest peak of the Tost mountains in the Gobi Desert region of Mongolia. A small spike of a little over 2500m, this peak is a easy hike. But the remoteness and the cold together makes it hard to get out of your tent and get going. Once you are out climbing up it is much easier.

Me on the summit of the highest peak in the Tost mountains in the Gobi region of Mongolia

Four years ago, Takpa and I were convinced that the cold was going to kill us both. This year I was convinced that I was going to fall to my death when I tried to descend through a dried up waterfall. In retrospect, I think none of the two times were so dangerous to bring us close to our deaths. But mountains have a way of cascading dangers. You make on false move and like a cascade your problems just keep on increasing. Sometimes, the fear of death even before the first mistake saves you the trouble of fighting the cascade.

The Golden Gobi

I had lost the sunlight over an hour ago. Well, the sunlight barely made it into these narrow canyons during this time of the year. I was in the South Gobi region of Mongolia and this was the month of November. With no sun reaching the dept of these canyons, the temperature was well below freezing. The one thing I

The main highway cutting across
the Tost and Tosunbumba mountains

dreaded the most in this region was a bike crash. And just as the thought crossed my mind, the rear wheel of my bike wobbled in the loose gravel and I came down crashing. Lying on the ground I smelled petrol and so I immediately rushed to the bike and put it on the main stand. Only a little petrol had leaked. I had a minor bruise on my left thigh but otherwise I seemed alright.


I pulled out the map of the region and my GPS unit and pondered for a while. After a few minutes I admitted to myself that I was lost! With the sun going down my situation was worsening. My best bet was to head dead north, get out of the mountain and into the open steppe, and I should be able to see the road; simple! Find the highway in the steppe and get back to camp. If I could make it to the highway before total dark I should be fine.

An ibex in the late evening. Usually they
prefer the rugged rocky cliffs

I was here in the Gobi desert to try and assess the conservation status and distribution of wild ungulates in the newly proposed Local Protected area around the Tost-Tosunbumba mountains. Alongside, I also hoped to estimate the availability of wild-ungulate-prey for the snow leopard which would complement my work in India. This is also the site of the Long Term Ecological Study, a joint venture of the Snow Leopard Trust and PANTHERA. The only place in the world where you can study the snow leopard using, almost exclusively, a motorbike to get around. Orjan, a colleague from Sweden, is also doing his PhD here. He is incredible when it comes to collaring snow leopards. He has already collared 15 snow leopards and 6 of them currently carry their collars. The study is aimed at understanding the home range, movement and predation pattern of snow leopards. I felt that our work complimented each other very well.

"Nartai", Sunlight, as we called him, was the last snow leopard that Orjan had collared before leaving for Sweden

The most abundant ungulate in this region was the Siberian ibex Capra sibirica and the argali Ovis amon. Though the latter is comparatively much rarer. Outside the mountains and into the steppe there is also the Black-tailed gazelle, khulan and the occasional wild Bactrian camel that stray from the neighboring Great Gobi Strictly Protected area.

Argali, the biggest wild-sheep in the world.
They mainly preffer the rolling hills on the
periphery of the Tost Mountains

From my assessments so far, there is a healthy population of ibex. Large enough to support a viable population of the snow leopards. But the status of the other four ungulates is bleak. Interviews with the local herders suggested that the Khulan may even have gone locally extinct; sometime over the last decade. Nadia, an alumni of the M.Sc. Course at the Wildlife Institute of India, but a local Mongolian, helped with the interview surveys. She also found out that it was only a few male bactrian camels that made forays to this region , that too only during winters, probably in search of mates among the domestic free-ranging camel population. Over the last decade the Black-tailed gazelle has retreated further west and exists as a small population of less than 30 individuals. Even though the argali is distributed over a much larger area, their population seems small, as sighting an argali is a difficult task.

The gloden glow of the Gobi is deceptive. It masks the bitter cold!

Even if this area was declared a Local Protected Area, it was threatened by the mining companies that had already procured licenses to explore for minerals in this region. I had already seen some of the mining activity within the borders of the PA. Then there was also the illegal, open-cast mining for gold; aptly called Ninja mining. You hardly ever saw people doing it, just the scares left on the land! The border with China, the sink for all the minerals of Mongolia,  is barely 40 km away from here. The nightmare of straying into china that haunted me at my field site in Spiti, Himachal Pradesh, India, still haunts me here!

The Golden Gobi!

As these thoughts were running in my head, I rode over a gentle rolling hill and the vast steppe opened in front of me. The warm glow of the setting sun reflected from the dry grass covering the landscape in shades of gold! I wondered why anyone would want to dig up a place as beautiful as this.

I guess, the glitter of gold outshines the Gobi!

Counting Ibex in Mongolia

First week of October I started on an enormous task of estimating the population of Ibex in the Tost and Tosunbumba mountains in the South Gobi region of the Mongolia. After scouting around, getting used to the area for the first few weeks I started the actual work only in the last week of October.

The Steppe of Gobi and the Tost mountains in the background

The Tost-Tosunbumba mountains cover an area of about 2000 km2 and are almost in the middle of the Gobi desert. There is very low precipitation and temperature fluctuates between 30 degrees in the summer to -30 in the winters. Temperature now (Oct- Nov) hovers between -10 at night and 4 during the day. The mountains are not very high, the base of the mountain is at about 1800m and the highest summit rises only a little above 2500m. The terrain is very rugged in parts and absolutely gentle and rolling at others.

A rutting male ibex with a female.

I have divided the entire landscape into smaller units ranging from 20-150 km2. The larger units are further divided into smaller grids of ~20-30 km2. I am using a method developed by Forsyth and Hickling (1997) to count the Himalayan Tahr in the South Isle of New Zealand. In this method, one does a double count of all the herds in the survey area. Based on the age-sex classification of individuals in a herd, the observers the find out the herds that were counted only during the first survey, only in the second survey and herds counted in both the surveys. Using the differences in counting in both the surveys the observers then estimate the probability of detections which then helps to estimate the number of groups that were missed in both the surveys. The method relies on the robust mark-recapture theory.

It is the solitary animals or the small groups that are harder to detect!

Sunshine and her cub

An edited version of this article appeared in the magazine 'Hornbill' April-June 2011

What could it be that the boy had confused for a sheep stuck in the snow?’ Curious, I had peered through the spotting scope. There were two of them ... was it Sunshine? But who was that with her? Why were they here in broad daylight...? Sunshine was afar in the low resolution photograph that Charu had sent to me. But, she was one of the most beautiful beings that I had ever seen. Though the photograph was not too clear, one couldn’t miss the striking features of this elusive cat – a Snow Leopard. Charu’s email read “results from last summer’s camera trapping exercise in Spiti”. The camera traps had captured many images of four different snow leopards. He had attached few low resolution images of all the four snow leopards. The first was a large male who had lost his tail; he had been named ‘Tail cut’. The second was another male but not as large as Tail cut; he had been named ‘Eureka’. And finally there was a photograph of a mother and her cub. The mother had been named ‘Sunshine’ and her cub had been left unnamed.



This fall winter I had set off on a mission to Spiti, Himachal Pradesh, with the hope of studying the foraging behaviour and eating habits of the blue sheep (Pseudois nayaur), one of the most
important preys of the snow leopard. Spiti which lies in the rain shadow area of the Trans-Himalayan region is subject to harsh winters (the temperature drops down to -35º C). The ground is covered with over two feet of snow with gale forced winds blowing throughout. Following the blue sheep in such weather conditions was a tough task, but I was geared up to rough it out. On reaching Spiti in early December at the camp, a remote village of Tashigang, I was feeling strange to set base in a village comprising of merely 6 houses and 18 people. The winter had already set in and the night time temperature would drop to -20º C. Takpa and Kalzang, two local guys were to help me with my data collection along with Sushil, Thillay, Kalzang Gurmet and Sheru working in the Nature Conservation Foundation for wildlife
conservation in the region. Together we set up the camp; my home for the next six months!

Thus, began my quest of running the camp and working in the fields with the aid of Kalzang and Takpa. I began to follow the blue sheep, spending days and nights watching and taking meticulous notes on their foraging behaviour. One fine day on our way from the camp to the area, where I had last seen the blue sheep, we came across a dead blue sheep along with two sets of snow leopard pug marks around the kill. On following the tracks for a little while, we came to a site where the pair had rested, and then the tracks disappeared into the craggy cliffs,
which we could not follow.



My routine was pretty much in flow, I would take a day off once every ten days. On one of those idle days, I was lazing around the terrace of our camp with my spotting scope, sipping on a hot tea, imploring lady luck as I hadn’t spotted anything yet. Time passed by… a little boy from the village walked up to the roof of the camp and started peering through the spotting scope. He saw something and concluded that it was 'a blue sheep stuck in the snow'. I laughed his remark off, “blue sheep are adapted to living in these conditions and would not get stuck in the snow”! He acknowledged my argument, and did not pursue the subject any further. But then, my curiosity got the better of me. What could it be that the boy had confused for a blue sheep stuck in snow? I peered through the spotting scope. What I saw was one of the biggest surprise of my life. It was a snow leopard, a kilometre away, silently plodding through about two feet of powder snow; with only the head showing it seemed as if it was swimming in the deep snow!



I kept my spotting scope focused and tried hard to see where the snow leopard was headed. Suddenly, I noticed another movement through the corner of the spotting scope. There were two snow leopards, walking parallel to each other maintaining a distance of about twenty feet! Enthralled, I decided to get a closer look and ran downstairs, calling Sushil, Kalzang and Thillay on the way. The next moment the four of us and a couple of boys from the village headed to a place where we could hide and wait for the approaching snow leopards to take a closer look and note the direction in which they were headed. Soon we were positioned at the right spot and the two snow leopards arrived without any further delay. They were across a deep gorge from us but the distance as the crow flies was less than a few hundred meters.

Snow leopards are known for their secretive behaviour. The first photograph of a snow leopard was taken in the 1970s. They are nocturnal, live in extremely rugged terrain and are very well camouflaged; appropriately called by some as ‘ghost of the mountains’. And here they were two of them, in bright day light, barely a few hundred meters from us. One was clearly older than the other. It had to be them! Sunshine and her cub… they were the only mother-cub pair existing in the area! It was unlikely that another mother-cub pair would have its home range overlapping that of Sunshine. While Sunshine lay in the snow, her cub played with her tail. All of a sudden both were still and alert, we could feel the tension in the air. Further away, on the same slope, we noticed movement… immediately we focussed our lenses… another snow leopard! We couldn’t believe our eyes. One of most elusive wild cat of the world and we were watching three together! Trans-fixed by this development we failed to notice the tension building up, around Sunshine and her cub. The cub’s movements softened; it crouched, belly brushing the floor, almost disappearing into the surrounding. The third snow leopard appeared to be a large male. He stayed about 100 m from Sunshine and her cub, hidden in a rock crevasse by now. The tension persisted for over an hour, throughout which Sunshine while basking in the open sunny slope kept a close watch on the new male, while her cub stayed put in its rocky hideout, peeping outside at regular intervals. There was no doubt in my mind that the large male was aware of the cub’s presence and location, but never displayed any aggression. In many large cat species, males are known to be aggressive towards cubs that are not their own, sometimes even killing them. That explained the undercurrent here... but why was the large male so calm? Was he the cub’s father? I will never know... Our insufficient observations didn’t allow us to pick up details on the male, we couldn’t even confirm if he was one of the resident leopards or a new visitor to the area.



By now it had been over 5 hours since the first leopard was spotted, soon it was evening and the sun dipped below the ridge-line in the west and the temperatures started to dip rapidly, a signal for us to leave soon (I was unable to hold the binoculars due to the cold). We left the snow leopards after it became too dark to notice any movement; even against the bright snow. That night I stayed up wondering about what must have happened after we left. Who was the large male? Would he attack the cub in the dark or would they just be fine together? What about Sunshine? This was the breeding season of the snow leopards. Would she mate with this large male? Was her cub old enough to wean off and look after himself? The next day, at the first light of the day, we were back at the site; but they were gone! The wind had cleaned whatever little remained to be read of the footprints. There was no evidence of the presence of the animals from the previous day, just uniform snow cover all across. That day onwards I was much more optimistic about sighting a snow leopard, I was watchful and rewarded soon.



A few weeks later, while observing a herd of blue sheep over the deep gorge formed by the Shilla nala (one of Spiti river’s tributaries), a rock suddenly moved in the valley below. The movement was not at the bottom of the gorge, but on a ledge on my side of the gorge; only a few hundred metres below me. A grey shadow slyly slid past a few rocks and settled down again. I focused my binoculars on the exact spot, but it was difficult to spot the shadow. It moved again and kept walking along the ledge and finally… a beautiful snow leopard emerged from the stealthy shadow. It must have been on the ledge for quite some time but I had noticed it only when it moved, warily it kept walking. I knew it hadn’t noticed me as I was watching it from the top, literally a bird’s eye view. The peculiarity of this leopard confirmed my doubts – it was Sunshine’s cub. I had often seen pug marks of an adult leopard and a cub in this area... but where was Sunshine? I followed the cub along a parallel ledge vertically above it. I lost sight of it for some time but knew where the ledge would lead him; I rushed along the ledge and waited for the cub to emerge at the other end. It took him a while, but he came and startled a herd of blue sheep that were feeding there. Although he walked like a ghostly shadow, his movements were awkward when he approached the blue sheep herd. His hunting techniques were still poor… which meant that he had not weaned off completely. Maybe Sunshine had gone hunting and her cub was just trying his luck around their den? The startled blue sheep soon left and the cub sat down under an over hanging rock. After a while, Takpa, my friend and assistant, came looking for me. We just sat there watching the cub sleep. Then just as silently as it appeared, it got up and disappeared like a shadow in the boulders at the bottom of the valley bottom; never a sound nor a glint; always camouflaged in his surroundings.

I saw the cub only one more time before the end of the project, a brief glimpse. It peeped at us from behind some rocks. But now every time I return to the mountains and see a pug mark in the snow, it fills me with joy, hoping that it is the shadow, a little older now... holding its own territory... hunting for itself!

Conservation Leadership Program Traning Course

(An edited version of this post has been posted at http://blog.conservation.org/2011/08/conservation-leaders-build-skills-in-canadian-rockies/)

Group photo at lake Louise (Photo courtesy of Robyn Dalzen)

At a recent Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP) international training workshop in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, participants were in the middle of a heated role-play debate over drilling for oil in and around important wildlife habitats.

“Twenty five percent of the profits from this oil well will be used for local community development,” negotiated the petroleum company representative.

“But we don’t want the oil wells here, and we don’t need the money,” argued the community members. The outcome was inevitable; the community members were not going to budge.

Seldom do things turn out so easy in real life conservation. In my own project in India, convincing the government to divert an upcoming road away from an important snow leopard (Panthera uncia) habitat has surely been a challenge!

To better equip us to tackle difficult conservation issues, one representative from each of the 30 CLP award-winning teams — spanning 20 different countries — participated in a two-and-a-half week training course at the University of Calgary’s Barrier Lake Field Station.

Lake Barrier field station (Photo courtesy Danka)

We debated many issues, assessed case studies and geared up for our own projects back home. We actively participated in workshops taught by experts in their field on project planning, behavior change through education, media and messaging, and engaged in discussion sessions on advocacy, climate change and fundraising. We also had “culture nights” where we learned about each other’s cultures, and each participant gave a presentation on their project.

A multitude of languages were spoken, but the message of conservation remains the same. I was inspired by the range of conservation projects being conducted by my fellow participants, ranging from expanding marine protected areas in Brazil to evaluating the only remaining Marquesan kingfisher (Todiramphus godeffroyi) population in French Polynesia; from assessing the threats to vipers in Armenia to conducting new research about a rare subspecies of chimpanzee in Nigeria.

Over the course of the training, my own work back in India became clearer to me. I learned important lessons about behavior change and how to reach out to people and strike an emotional chord to achieve this task.

In our project, we aim to identify the villages most affected by livestock damage by the snow leopard. These are the villages most likely to persecute the snow leopard in retaliation. We hope to work with these villages and identify a win-win strategy to prevent livestock damage and encourage snow leopard conservation. For humans and snow leopards to co-exist, local people will need to change their lifestyle in many ways — altering their livestock herding methods, changing pasture use to facilitate wild-herbivore population recovery and, above all, shifting their attitudes toward the snow leopard itself.

A Columbian ground squirrel at the barrier lake field station.

For the participants and CLP staff members, we were peers in the classroom, an international audience in the presentation hall, teammates on the football and volleyball field, dance partners at the cultural nights and newfound friends. We parted with a heavy heart but armed to shoulder the responsibility of the small contributions that we are determined to make to conserve wildlife wherever we are.