Tag: conservation volunteering

It was after midnight when we arrived back in Bishkek this Sunday morning.

When we left on Friday, we did not expect the unexpected when driving up the mountain pass road well in time according to the timetable set for preparing base camp. Road construction work was going on in the darkness of the tunnel, so it was closed for trucks, including ours!

Phil, Volodya, Emma, Isma & I passed in one of the expedition cars while Aman and Bekbolot stayed back in the truck on the other side. No information could be gained about how long the temporarily closure would last. So we just sat and waited, and waited, and waited, watching dozens of trucks piling up in front of us probably half way down the pass road. Four hours later, at 18:00, the worker’s finishing time, finally the orange & white NABU truck appeared out of the dark of the tunnel!

We drove on in convoy until about half past eight until we reached the place of a herder friend of ours, where we pitched a few tents for spending the night in.

But we did not go to sleep before having a very basic but good dinner.

After another three-hour drive on Saturday, we reached last year’s base camp location and finally we scouted out a beautiful location close to Talant’s (another herder friend) yurt, about two km further up the Karakol Pass. The spot is at an altitude of 2,950 m and beside a stream supplying us with water and the opportunity for a very refreshing bath for the very brave. You may feel some shortness of breath when arriving, but don’t worry, we will take it slowly, and although altitude sickness can occur from 2,400 m onwards, medical evidence shows that it is not usually a problem below 3,500 m.

Talant and his family are good friends with the NABU staff and they have also been hosting expedition teams every year in their yurt for a traditional Kyrgyzs meal on the day off. Talant’s sons will also look after the camp during the week between slot 1 & 2, when everyone will go back to Bishkek.

I would not call base camp set-up a routine, but now in our third year, we are a well-oiled team. So the truck was quickly unloaded and the kitchen tent & cooker were set up first, so that Emma start weaving her magic in the kitchen. Because of the delay, we only had part of the day to set up and did so without allowing ourselves a break. By 18:00 base was set up sufficiently so that Phil, Aman, Emma & I could leave for another six hour drive back to Bishkek. Volodya, Bekbolot and Isma stayed back to finish setting up for our return on Monday. Team 1: We need lots of people to set up the yurt, so this will be our first activity after the long journey from Bishkek and before I’ll talk everyone through the risk assessment.

Whilst I write this, Phil has gone for some last minute shopping with Emma. It is sunny and warm in Bishkek and the 14 day weather forecast looks promising. The second expedition vehicle has just been delivered, I have printed some more paperwork such as a Russian translation of the interview datasheet, etc. and will finish up with office work today.

I hope you are as excited as we are, now that preparation is over and we are all ready to go! We are looking forward to meeting the first team tomorrow (Monday) morning at 08:00 at Futuro hotel.

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From our snow leopard volunteering expedition in the Tien Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan 

 

We’re leaving Bishkek tomorrow morning to set up base camp. The truck is loaded with equipment such as the yurt, stove & wood, kitchen, mess, toilet & shower tents, cooking gear, gas bottles, fuel canisters, tables & benches and a great variety of other farily useful things. Today Emma, Volodya & Phil spent most of day shopping. An infinite loop of filling basket after basket, passing the cashier, loading the car and going straight back in for the next run. I stayed back at the NABU offices preparing paperwork and equipment.

The datasheets are printed, the GPSs set up and the scat collection kits made up (you will learn what that is during the training days).

Keep your fingers crossed that the truck won’t get stuck or drive into the ditch as it did last year! Aman, Phil & I will return to Bishkek on Saturday. I will let you have the latest news before the first team meets on Monday morning.

And finally, a word on the weather: It has been raining in Bishkek almost every day, but when the sun comes out it is pretty hot in the city. The south side of Ala-Too range, where our study site is, is less cloudy, but the temperatures will be much lower. Please be

prepared for both rain and sunshine (and snow can fall even in summer). Temperatures in the mountains can be anything from 5 to 25 degrees C, sometimes even dropping to freezing overnight. More first hand info when we are back from setting up.

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From our snow leopard volunteering expedition in the Tien Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan 

Phil & I arrived in Bishkek on Sunday, where we were warmly welcomed by our partners on the ground at the NABU office and went straight to work. We fetched the expedition equipment, stored last year at the outskirts of Bishkek, together with Almaz and NABU staff. It was­ half a truck load of tents, the yurt, research and kitchen equipment, spare tyres and car boxes, water and fuel canisters, cookers, gas bottles, benches & tables, etc., etc.

In the afternoon we were invited to a meal with everyone.

Over the next couple of days we will be checking the equipment, writing shopping lists, going shopping for food and other supplies, and updating paperwork. Tomorrow will be the end of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, a public holiday of big celebration here in Kyrgyzstan. So we are hoping to find some Chinese shops open tomorrow morning, which means group 1 will be on Chinese food for a couple of weeks 😉

Volodya, our scientist, arrived this morning, completing the team. We had a meeting with Amadeus in the afternoon, talking through butterfly, birds & petroglyph data collection procedures using the newly created apps. Volodya was quite excited about how easy & quick data collection and processing could be, if modern technology does work out in the field. We will have old-fashioned pen & paper versions as back-ups too.

Tonight Emma kindly invited us to have dinner at her place. She cooked a delicious meal and made Phil & I eat an enormous amount of Tiramisu afterwards. In case any of you consider weight loss to be a possible side effect to the expedition, forget about it! 😉

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From our snow leopard volunteering expedition in the Tien Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan 

Hello everyone and welcome to the Tien Shan 2016 expedition diary!

My name is Malika and I will be your expedition leader on the first group together with Phil. Phil will then take over leading groups 2 & 3 of this year’s snow leopard conservation expedition to the Tien Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan.

For the third time this Biosphere Expeditions project will be run in collaboration with NABU Kyrgyzstan and the ‘Gruppa Bars’ (snow leopard patrol), consisting of four Kyryzs NABU members of staff that work in snow leopard conservation all whole year round. Each group will be accompaigned by two Gruppa Bars members (and I’ll introduce you to everyone in due course). They will be our guides, mountain experts, spokespeople and link to the local herders.

Dr. Volodya Tytar, originally from the Ukraine, is the expedition scientist. He has been working on this snow leopard project for more than a decade from the very beginning in the Altai mountains of Russia, before the study site was moved to Kyrgyzstan in 2014. If you would like to read about last year’s results, the 2015 expedition report will be ready for downloading within the next few days. You’ll receive an e-mail notification soon! Older reports are on www.biosphere-expeditions.org/reports.

As in previous years, we will also have a couple of local placements on each group. They all have a specific interest in conservation, good knowledge of English and will help with communications in general and with conducting interviews at local herders’ yurts in particular.

So far so good. All staff involved are busy with organising things by e-mailing from our desks in Germany, the UK, Kiev and Bishkek, but we will all finally meet at the Bishkek NABU office on Sunday. So we will be about a week ahead of you, fetching base camp equipment from storage, checking and shopping for items that need to be replaced, buying supplies, etc. We will scout out a base camp location, set up camp, meet our cook Emma, shop for food (a lot) and make sure everything will be ready and in place for research work to commence when the first team arrives.

As regards the research work, have a look below, where methods and equipment are explained. The more you know now, the easier it will be for you during the first two training days, so do swot up, if you can. In addition to studying the dossier, have a look at the “Methods & equipment” playlist. The bits that are relevant to the expedition are first and foremost our cell survey methodology, followed by GPS, compass & map, Garmin etrex 20, PBLs, camera trapping and binoculars. Enjoy!

Finally, a word on some additional research we will be doing (that is not mentioned in the dossier): Amadeus, a local placement who joined the expedition in 2015, has created a ‘Butterflies of Kyrgyzstan’ app based on data that were collected last year. We will continue collecting butterfly data along the way on survey walks either by pen & paper or, much better, by putting data directly into the app. The app is available for downloading at WWW.DISCOVERNATURE.ORG.KG (Android version only). So, if you are planning to bring your personal Android smartphone, please consider downloading the app (how we will recharge all the phones in the absence of a convenient power plug is another matter ;). We will also be collecting data on birds that will contribute to creating a similar ‘Birds of Kyrgyzstan’ app in due course. Of course you will be trained on all of this during the introduction and training day!

That’s it for now. Once Phil and I have arrived in Bishkek we’ll be in touch again with our local phone numbers and some more updates from the ground.

Best wishes

Malika Fettak

Expedition leader

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