Biosphere Expeditions: blogs from the frontline of wildlife conservation and the fight for a more sustainable planet

We have decided to strike while the iron is hot. As you know, as a result of our recent interviews with local herders, we have discovered two very recent incidents involving alleged leopard attacks on young horses in two of the bigger and more remote valleys in this system. Each were within the fortnight or so and in response to the more local account, we investigated on horseback the site of an atttack. As we placed a camera beside a heavily used pass, the unmistakeable cough of what we surmised to be a big cat in the cliffs above could be heard. Whilst none of the party saw the animal, we are now fairly certain that there is a snow leopard in that location.

The more distant and more recent incident is in fact in the valley of the original base camp. The stories are very similar, with a young horse discovered dead with large puncture and crush wounds to the throat. This is highly typical of the leopard method of killing large prey, gripping the throat and asphixiating the quarry (there is a photo sequence of this killing method on http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/20/the-first-ever-successful-snow-leopard-hunt-and-kill-caught-on-camera/). The fact that a snow leopard will apparently abandon the kill at the slightest disturbance has led to the almost ubiquitously believed folk tale that the snow leopard is in fact drinking the blood of its prey rather than eating its flesh. Either way, large dead animals with “vampire-like” neck wounds can only mean one thing and the consistency of the stories as told by the herders who recently lost their horses, and by the wider community of herders throughout our huge survey region who’ve simply heard about those losses, suggests that we are not being led on a wild goose chase by folk who just want to tell us what we want to hear.

So, the hot iron… We have decided to split the team into two overnighters who will each attend an incident site and attempt to make a more thorough investigation of the environs surrounding the two kills. One team has returned to the valley of the original base camp and will atempt to get to the bottom of that story before heading further into the valley with Volodya. The other team has been deployed back into the valley that was the subject of my recent experience and will spend two days making a careful survey of its upper reaches. We have sent the FLIR thermographic equipment with the second team as they will be camping closer to the cliffs and will have a better chance to use the gear to best effect. The first team have a powerful spotting scope to scan the wider valley ends that they will face.

Your truly has remained at base camp with our awesome chef, Emma, as it represents a “central” point of contact that either group will be able to find me at should the need arise, rather than trying to locate me in either of the large ranges that each group will be negotiating.

For some reason I feel like this will be an exciting next couple of days… For the team at least. At least I’ll eat well…

Our neighbours from a yurt down the road reported that one of their young horses was killed by a leopard about two weeks ago. He offered to take us to the site of the attack on horseback to set up some camera traps. Today we took him up on his offer and what ensued was a hard ride up a long valley in sometimes driving snow and other times baking sun. When we got to the end of the valley, we ascended on foot beyond the moraine to a vegetated pass in a protected hollow below a small glacier. Signs of leopard prey were common and fresh with footprints and scat everywhere. While we were setting up the third camera, a small disturbance high above us sent some stones tumbling and a second or so later a percussive cough, characteristic of a leopard was clearly heard. The local guys believe that a mother and cubs are resident in this place from where they make hunting forays into the valley propper. I can’t wait to pick up those cameras with the last slot….

With a population density of one animal per 100 square kilometers, our chance of stumbling upon a snow leopard are rather low. Nevertheless, with the gear at our disposal and in the hands of this motivated team, we can go a long way towards assessing this landscape’s potential for harbouring our target creature. With the various optical scopes and binoculars we have seen many of the animals on the leopard’s menu and we’ve even seen fellow peak predators in the form of a lone wolf, sighted yesterday. It was a young wolf, which suggests a population in the active state of sustaining itself. The other predators we’ve seen are mostly eagles, which still speaks of a landscape capable of supporting a reasonable number of predators.

Testing our FLIR unit, we find that it will clearly display warm marmot mounds with their nervous tennants in the dead of night from over a hundred metres away, so I have high hopes that the upcoming overnighters will put it to good use on the cliffs and crags (leopard habitat) that their temporary camp will be established within easy sight of.

Yesterday, the team on the interview detail went out and visited a number of yurts. Kyrgyz hospitality is famous and also quite socially impossible to refuse. At each yurt we were invited inside and stuffed with bread and fermented horse milk and other delights until a number of us felt much the worse for wear. We discovered a great deal of consistent reportage of recent leopard incidents and the result is a fairly good idea of where a snow leopard and cubs are currently residing. We are heading there on horseback in the next few days to place camera traps, inching ever closer to our object of desire. Will we get there during the 2014 expedition?

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We woke up after an especially chilly night to find the mountains surrounding the camp were dusted with fresh snow. It is all gone now but it was impressive to see and it explained the need for the extra layers.

The little stream beside the base camp is deceptively placid looking. Today, the team went on a preliminary field survey to help them find their feet.

After crossing the creek, glacier-fed from only a couple of kilometers away, it was harder to find their feet than many expected. Some, including our excellent Kyrgyz placement Aliashkar, actually had to get visual confirmation that they were still attached to their legs! No-one fell in though, despite the fact that the last metre of the crossing was very swift and finding good ground with numb toes is not an easy task. The video of our first overnighter at below shows you what a river crossing looks like.

Today I also introduced a piece of awesome technology to the team. The thermography company, FLIR, have lent me one of their quite amazing field units. This device images the world in terms of the heat differences in the landscape. Subtle differences in temperature of fractions of a degree are rendered clearly visible. Mammals of course, being warm-bodied, stand out clearly against the cool alpine background. Perfect, I explained to FLIR, for finding warm white things in the snow at night. We will send the unit out into the field in the coming days, but I expect its greatest utility to be discovered on the overnighters when the team will have the time and the proximity to scan the rocky ends of the valleys from close up. Thanks to FLIR for this generous loan.