SNOW LEOPARD DIARY !
The team has already managed to fit a collar to one cat. A research project is underway to learn more about the elusive snow leopard. A team has travelled to the Chitral Gol National Park in the Pakistan-Afghanistan borders to attach GPS collars to five of the cats, to understand more about the animals' movements.
With one snow leopard successfully tagged, the team is hopeful its mission will be a success, and the team members will be charting their progress for the BBC News website.
The first entry is by project leader Tom McCarthy.
28 NOVEMBER: THE STORY SO FAR
Warm greetings from Chitral Gol National Park. Well, sort of warm; I am sitting near the fire with my woollen Chitrali shawl around me on a brisk (33F, 0C) morning.
We arrived in Chitral town nearly three weeks ago. We were already a few days behind schedule when we reached Chitral due to the protests over the bombing of the madrassa (religious school) near the Afghan border.
Snow leopard fitted with GPS
Once in Chitral, it was the same peaceful, pleasant village I am so used to. I felt very safe and two days later we were off for the park.
The entrance to Chitral Gol Park is a few thousand feet above town. Once at the top, it's about an hour's hike down into the valley that is the heart of the reserve.
Base camp for our work is a wildlife watcher's (someone who takes care of the park) house with quite decent facilities: two bedrooms, storage room, kitchen, and even two flush toilets!
Behind schedule, we did a quick day of recon for trap sites and then started putting out our snares.
Global warming was not helping us, and the unseasonably hot (71F,22C) days and lack of snow were keeping all the markhor (wild goats) and snow leopards high on the peaks in the back of the park - out of reach of our base camp.
Wobbly legs
The very knowledgeable wildlife watchers told us it could be December before the animals came down this year. We expected a long boring month waiting for their arrival.
If you know me well, you can guess how well that idea sat. After about nine days, I decided we needed to stretch ourselves a bit and put snares closer to the next watcher's hut, about two hours away and much nearer to the snow line.
Two days later, we caught our first leopard! Where? In the snare closet to our base camp - visible in fact from our porch. So much for extended traplines.
We had caught a healthy 78lb (35kg) female.
She was a little slow to come out of her sedated state and gave us fits as she struggled to get coordination back - her normal cliffy home is not a place we wanted to see her head for on wobbly legs.
After a tense several hours she was off to the peaks and her radio signal the next day showed she was moving well.
For the past several days, she has been hanging out in a cliffy area near camp, where I am guessing she has been gorging on a well-deserved markhor.
This morning, she left and headed up the valley. Soon we should start getting regular reports via satellite on her exact movements.
One done, four more cats to catch.
The entrance to Chitral Gol Park is a few thousand feet above town. Once at the top, it's about an hour's hike down into the valley that is the heart of the reserve.
Base camp for our work is a wildlife watcher's (someone who takes care of the park) house with quite decent facilities: two bedrooms, storage room, kitchen, and even two flush toilets!
Behind schedule, we did a quick day of recon for trap sites and then started putting out our snares.
Global warming was not helping us, and the unseasonably hot (71F,22C) days and lack of snow were keeping all the markhor (wild goats) and snow leopards high on the peaks in the back of the park - out of reach of our base camp.
Wobbly legs
The very knowledgeable wildlife watchers told us it could be December before the animals came down this year. We expected a long boring month waiting for their arrival.
If you know me well, you can guess how well that idea sat. After about nine days, I decided we needed to stretch ourselves a bit and put snares closer to the next watcher's hut, about two hours away and much nearer to the snow line.
Two days later, we caught our first leopard! Where? In the snare closet to our base camp - visible in fact from our porch. So much for extended traplines.
We had caught a healthy 78lb (35kg) female.
She was a little slow to come out of her sedated state and gave us fits as she struggled to get coordination back - her normal cliffy home is not a place we wanted to see her head for on wobbly legs.
After a tense several hours she was off to the peaks and her radio signal the next day showed she was moving well.
For the past several days, she has been hanging out in a cliffy area near camp, where I am guessing she has been gorging on a well-deserved markhor.
This morning, she left and headed up the valley. Soon we should start getting regular reports via satellite on her exact movements.
One done, four more cats to catch.
Tom McCarthy, project leader and conservation director of the Snow Leopard Trust.
The study is a joint collaboration between the Snow Leopard Trust, the Northwest Frontier Province Wildlife Department and WWF-Pakistan.
posted by jackaranda at 1:59 pm
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