Tien Shan: Group 2 summary

Update from our snow leopard volunteer project to the Tien Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan

Our second group was an expedition of two distinct halves. The first week was characterised by expansive blue skies with wall-to-wall sunshine. The second week was a different beast altogether, with gloomy skies, rain and thunderstorms almost daily. The weather, however, did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm and motivation to conduct research and get deep into the mountains.

The first few days were filled with training and briefings before we got into the nitty gritty of the work we are here to do – research snow leopards, their prey and survey their natural habitat. We have been very successful in this aspect with 85 different cells already sampled, amounting to a total of area of 340 square kilometres surveyed.

Our scientist Emil led a group of willing expeditioners deeper into the mountains on a three-day expedition across a 4000 m pass that leads into the Jil Sul valley to the north of our base camp. This enabled us to survey cells that would be impossible to reach in just one day and to place camera traps in promising locations.

Another team conducted an overnight expedition by car deep into the valley to survey cells at a lower to mid altitude and were fortunate to find wolf scat as well as evidence of snow leopard prey species and some interesting bird sightings.

I am currently back in Bishkek making our preparations for the third and final group. Emil and I have been working hard on a camera trap plan, so there will be plenty of opportunites to get into the high mountains during the next two weeks.

Thank you to group 2 for your hard work and we are looking forward to meeting group 3 on Monday.

Update from our Kyrgyzstan expedition to the Tien Shan mountains, volunteering in snow leopard conservation.