Our plans have been thrown into disarray once again by the coronavirus.
We thought Kyrgyzstan was doing well and keeping the virus in check, but as it turns out we are only just at the beginning of the country’s first wave.
We have also just found out that all of our Community Camera Trap Monitoring Group (CCTMG) members are sick with COVID-19 symptoms. They are all from the village closest to our expedition base camp and from what I’ve heard, nearly every household in that village has at least one sick person in it.
So in the interest of all, we have postponed the community expedition. We will keep assessing the situation and keep you updated on here.
Some good news though is that recently in June, before they got sick, the CCTMG team was able to go into the mountains, do some more survey work and collect another SD card from a camera trap in our study area.
On this camera were more grainy night images of a single snow leopard, as well as some ibex and other species.
This is great news amidst the pandemic. Let’s hope that our people and the country can recover to a point where we can get back up into the mountains.
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