After training our team up on the research gear and methodology on Sunday and Monday, we split into three snowshoe teams on Tuesday. Like last year Milos took a team high up to a ridge finding two carcasses and a possible lynx track. Tomas’ team was fooled by tracks of possibly wolves or dogs – no one can tell! Tracking is really hard at the moment, though, as there is lots of fresh snow, which melts quickly as we have temperatures around zero. A little colder if it snows, a little warmer if it doesn’t.
In the evening our host Frantisek served us another delicious meal and we were then treated to his international potpourri of songs on the guitar.
On Wednesday we spilt up into four teams, again under difficult conditions as it startet snowing just as we left base. It’s hard to find tracks, but great to be out in this white wilderness.
Update from our conservation holiday volunteering with lynx, wolves and wildcats in the Carpathian mountains of Slovakia