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Just a quick one now with more details when have a minute in between switching groups and handing over to Adam. Thank you group 3, you have been excellent and we have achieved a lot (see Jenny’s presentation on http://www.slideshare.net/BiosphereExpeditions/altai-snow-leopard-expedition-iii2012).
Roll in group 4 and 5!
This is a quick hello from Kristina, our helpers and I. We spent the last couple of days (and nights!) with preparing paperwork and and getting set up with the work you will be doing. Group 1 will be the first team ever to survey the herd of nine (wild!) elephants in the study site. And wild they are indeed, and agressive they can be, so this will literally be no Etosha / Krueger cushy drive in the park where you will know where the pretty tame and vehicle-habituated animals are by spotting all the safari vehicles around them! More on the dangers and how to avoid them when you get here.
We’re about to move into camp – believe it or not, construction work is still going on all around camp with a small army of workers swarming around in a good termite mound impression. But the houses look good and habitable (sort of). You’ll be glad to know that the furniture has turned up and also the mattrasses. We also think that the bathrooms will be connected soon to the water line, otherwise it’s dust baths for group 1 to get into the spirit of elephant surveys. And we all know that no true expedition is ever complete without getting really dusty. As to the bar, you’ll have to find out when you get here.
These minor comfort issues aside, we are as excited as you hopefully are and we are looking forward to meeting trailblazing group 1 tomorrow morning at Casa Piccolo.
It’s great to be back in Namibia! Kristina and I went out for a drive around the study site yesterday. We found a baboon caught in a cheetah trap…
Construction work is still going on at base camp. The huts are being painted and the furniture will be delivered soon (we hope) while Kristina and I have taken two more Land Rovers to Windhoek to be fitted with new tyres and batteries. It’s all the usual last-minute African mayhem, which for us Krauts is hard to deal with 😉
Trailblazers in group 1, please be prepared for teething problems at camp and everything else you can imagine. Here’s the first thing we’re throwing at you: there will be limited electricity at base camp for the first couple of days (or weeks). We are still waiting to be connected to the main electricity line and while we wait, a generator will be used to feed our power-hungry equipment, so don’t bother bringing your hair dryers 😉 And by the way, plugs at base are type D (see http://users.telenet.be/worldstandards/electricity.htm for more details), so bring an adaptor.
The days are sunny and warm (25 deg) but it gets chilly once the sun has set. There will be a fireplace to sit around in the evenings, but (as per the dossier) bring an additional warm fleece or jacket.
I’ll let you have more details once we have moved into base.
We have spent the last couple of days scouring the ridges, hillsides and valleys. Nine camera traps are now in place, seven on the Talduair range close to base and a couple on Chickachova. It’s arduous work getting these camera traps out into the mountains, which is why you, our team members are so crucial. You could have gone for the cushy option of a beach holiday with a book, but instead you opted to come out here and help us research this mountain ghost and the tough habitat it calls home. All credit to you and thanks.
One of the Talduair cameras had fresh scrapes right in front of it, but then the camera did not work! Poor Jenny is tearing her hair out, but we are getting close. Our partners in the Altai, such as WWF Russia will be very interested in these news as Talduair is an area they are particularly interested in.
Oh, and by the way – THE WEATHER HAS BEEN GLORIOUS! We only have three days left with this group and we hope the weather will hold. Watch this space for further updates!
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia
We left Novosibirsk on Monday and for the first time managed to get through the permit palaver in Gorno Altaisk as per plan A, so no need for B, C and D, or so we thought until first one of the Land Rovers and then one of the team members started playing up. So some minor repairs and major altercations later, we finally arrived at base, still late as usual and minus one person. My thanks and gratitude to the remaining team who put up with a lot and pulled together like a real expedition team.
Then my tooth started playing up too, but luckily we have Friedy, a retired dentist, and Dani, a pharmacist with a bag full of pills to prove it, on the team. I was expertly taken care of (whilst Jenny did all the training sessions, thank you) and Gordon kept making chipmunk impressions behind my back 😉
News was then brought on Thursday by our local friend Kampi of snow leopards above his winter station not far away. Under Jenny’s guidance we jumped into the Land Rovers to have a look and make a plan K. The landscape has changed a lot because of the heavy rains, but the Land Rovers pulled through all the streams, which had turned into rivers.
Our new cook Olija is also delivering, conjuring up stews, borschts (sp?), and all sorts of tasty servings.
On Friday we split the team in two – one to survey the plan K snow leopard ridge, the second to retrieve a camera trap, yielding pictures of shaggy ibexes still shedding their winter coat. Jenny and her team hit the jackpot and found snow leopard scrapes on the ridge, then placed camera traps to hopefully catch their makers.
I wish the Altaian ground squirrels would all also meet their makers! Cute and ubiquitous as they are, they are also chewing through everything. Mark’s rucksack, Gordon’s towel, Jenny’s trousers, my favourite T-shirt; perhaps they’ll have indigestion soon and leave us alone! Unlikely.
Today we took it a little “easier” and retrieved another camera trap. Samara, Mark, Oleg, Jenny and I climbed to another ridge. The views were breathtaking, as were the camera trap pictures. It started slow with red-billed choughs, a family of Altai snowcocks and then…Pallas cat! This very rarest of cats is meant to be a steppe dweller, so to catch it on candid camera at 3000 m is as remarkable as getting a picture of it in the first place. Well done everyone! Just rewards for keeping your nerves through the horrible start.
P.S. I am sorry there are no pictures of the camera traps, but I am struggling to get them sent through from our remote location.
Hello my name is Malika and I will be your expedition leader for our Peru 2012 expedition, in our new location near Iquitos just off the mighty Amazon river.
I am early with this diary entry, because I am about to leave for Namibia where I will lead the first group of our big cat & elephant expedition. I will pass the baton in Namibia on 11 August and then fly via Johannesburg, Sao Paulo and Lima to Iquitos to meet our scientist Alfredo there and prepare the expedition. So this is just a first entry to say that I am off and you will hear from me again when I have hit the ground in Peru, and perhaps before.
Click on https://biosphereexpeditions.wordpress.com/category/expedition-blogs/namibia-2012/ for a short video of me saying hello, details of what I am up to in Namibia and a picture of the packing crisis I am currently having 😉 As it says on that blog: don’t pack the way I do!
See you in Iquitos
Malika Fettak
Expedition leader
Update from our conservation holiday volunteering with jaguars, pumas, ocelots, primates and other species in the Peru Amazon jungle.
I’m packing up for Namibia & Peru.
Best practice is this. Step 1 (accumulation) – throw it all in one place, step 2 (selection) – what items do I really have to take??, step 3 (packing) – make it fit in the bag somehow. I have completed steps 1 & 2 (see picture) and am confident I will master step 3 before tomorrow evening.
Note for rest of the team: please do not try and pack as much as I do! The picture scenario is “packing for a seven-week trip and preparing for two expeditions on two different continents”.
On Monday morning I’ll meet up with our scientist Kristina at Windhoek airport from where we will go straight into town for extreme pre-expedition shopping and picking up one of the Land Rovers that has been serviced and equipped with new tyres. I’ll write again once I have made it to base.
Good luck with your very own packing
Malika
Update from our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa.
How can I sum up the last group in a few words and apologise for not having been in touch much. Well, the weather has been perfectly horrid with lots of rain, interspersed by some sunny spells and our BGAN satellite phone is playing up so we are really in the middle of (communication) nowhere.
Anyway, the third group has arrived and we are on our way back to the Altai. Highlights of the second group include:
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Our local friends treating us to a party. We had no idea where all the food came from, but within a minute, Irina’s table was heaving under a load of home-made bread, luscious cream, several types of cheese, pickled apples – it all tasted so delicious.
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A very playful family of long-eared or Altai voles. We found them living with pikas and getting along famously.
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After the usual and seemingly endless permit hassles, we finally crossed into the border exclusion zone and felt very special indeed. The valley we set up the camp in was breathtaking. Steppe on one side and spectacular series glaciers on the other. This was argali, ibex and snow leopard country. Remote, protected (by default by boarder guards) and undisturbed.
We were itching to hit the slopes and soon we found ourselves walking on a narrow ledge above the camp, following a well-worn argali track. And then I spotted my first argali. A small herd of seven. We were thrilled. Not having seen them before, I didn’t know how they would react, but they seemed very timid and came within just 200 metres of us. We tracked them all the way down to the river, we even crawled on our bellies to get a closer look, when they suddenly vanished.
The next morning Jenny and Oleg took Carol, Andy, Dermott and Janine to the very top of the ridge overlooking our camp and my group and I started walking the road, which was snaking up into the valley. Oleg mentioned something about an abandoned mine, but we didn’t really see much until we reached a small plateau, well above 3000 m. It was quite a shock to see the hand of humans at work. Rusty machinery, rotting wood, ghastly buildings and in the middle of it, an old mining shaft. We steered well clear of it all and kept walking. Argali were abundant above the ridges and we found some sort of “argali hotel”, as Susan put it. Shallow depressions, dug into the scree by hundreds of animals, looking for a place to rest. The view over the saddle was breathtaking. We knew we were in the snow leopard country. As we reached an altitude of well above 3300 m, all credit goes to Louisa who scrambled to her record altitude without even losing a breath.
Jenny’s group had a hard time walking up the steep hill, but they were extremely lucky to find both scrapes and scat of what surely must have been a snow leopard. This was a great news and confirmation we are in the right area. With two camera traps set up high on the ridges, we just have to wait and see. What a great day!
Our Chikacheva trip, if only two days long, proved to be great success. We found scat, scrapes and set up three camera traps, high above the ridges. I am sure everyone would have liked to stay a bit longer, but the end of this group was beckoning.
Update from our snow leopard conservation expedition to the high mountains of the Altai Republic in Central Asia
Hello my name is Malika and I will be the first of three expedition leaders for this expedition. I will lead group 1 and then fly off to Peru to our expedition there. Kathy, our Strategy Director, will lead group 2 and then go back to the UK, and finally Jenny, who is currently chasing snow leopards in the Altai, will take over from Kathy to lead the rest of the expedition.
As you can see, this is will be a total girl power expedition. There’s a short welcome video featuring yours truly (and more pictures of base camp taking shape) on WordPress now.
Our scientist Kristina is a German TV star on http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/1477312,
Kathy is one on
and Jenny you can “meet” at Frankfurt airport jetting off to the Altai
There will also be a few men around, such as our esteemed Jörg Melzheimer, but they obviously come much lower down the pecking order 😉
Anyway, the scene is set and I will fly off to Windhoek on Sunday to be met by Kristina and Jörg, and together we will be going through the final preparations for the expedition, including putting mattresses on the beds and stocking the bar, if you are lucky.
The official expedition leader mobile number in Namibia is +264-81-8339507 and this will be active as of next Monday. Remember, though, that this is (a) for emergency purposes only, for example missing assembly and (b) that mobile phones do not work at base and around much of the study site, so sending a text is best.
I’ll write again from Namibia with a weather and preparations update. I hope yours are going well and I look forward to meeting group 1 at Casa Piccolo in due course.
Best wishes
Malika Fettak
Expedition leader group 1
Update from our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa
Biosphere Expeditions: blogs from the frontline of wildlife conservation and the fight for a more sustainable planet 