The Return of the Itinerant Biologist

Yaqu Monastery Outpost, where we stage our multi-carnivore program

What can I say? I started this blog two years ago with the intent of providing a running commentary of stories and photos to let all those interested know about my adventures in Central Asia. For many reasons, after only 3-4 months, I fell behind, stopped posting and altogether stopped thinking about the blog. A lot has happened since my last post; I spent time in Mongolia learning how to trap snow leopards, went to a multi-stakeholder snow leopard workshop in Kyrgyzstan, saw a snow leopard (and many other cool things), got engaged to a smart and beautiful woman, published papers, made new friends, met a new family member and a had a whole slew of minor experiences that might make for entertaining stories. Outside the scale of some of the international travel, I suppose it is easily summed up as living life, my experiences of parallel equivalence to many of yours. Over the year and a half since my last post I have had many inquiries on whether I was still writing my blog, and for whatever reason, I have felt compelled to make an entry now. 

Some of the landscape of Suojia.

I’m sitting in a hotel room in the frontier town of Zhidoi, in Qinghai, China, on the Tibetan Plateau. We are in the middle of a trapping session, taking a break to address other work obligations and to get a shower. One of the primary objectives of my position in China is to start a multi-carnivore research program to better understand the ecological underpinnings operating within a diverse carnivore guild on the Tibetan Plateau. Central among these carnivores are the critically endangered snow leopards. The gist of this program is to study not only the individual species of carnivores (including Tibetan brown bear, snow leopards, wolves, Tibetan fox, red fox and Pallas’s cats), but more importantly, the relationships between species and how they influence one another’s existence across the landscape. Snow leopards and wolves overlap in the type of prey they consume, brown bears will steal kills from snow leopards, foxes often feed upon the kills of the larger carnivores, fox and Pallas’s cats rely heavily on pika. All of them rely on pika and marmots to some extent. Among this intricate web of relationships is also the presence and persistence of the indigenous nomadic Tibetan herders. Their existence is as much a fixture of the landscape as the carnivores and their prey, and they must be considered within the ecological framework of conservation planning. Human-wildlife conflict is a constant across the world, and it is no different on the Tibetan Plateau where carnivores kill valuable livestock (the “savings accounts” for most herders) and where bears frequently break into houses in search of food. As human-carnivore conflict continues to escalate, herder communities are increasingly vocal for the removal of carnivores. The Chinese government’s confiscation of all firearms prevents the direct retaliatory killing by herders that is seen in other countries, but as anxieties peak it may only be a matter of time before covert anti-carnivore activities threaten these animals. On top of that, the increased tension caused by human-carnivore conflict undermines the progress of important conservation efforts necessary for the protection of the fragile landscape that they all share.  Strategies must be put in place to ensure the long term viability of the system that will work for all the players, including humans.

A snow leopard checks out an old blue sheep kill. The valleys are filled with tracks and carcasses.

Snow leopard passing by one of our box traps (Byron Weckworth/Panthera).

In order to know where and how best to enact effective policy and management strategies we first have to understand the system in which they are to be implemented. That brings us back to the trapping session. Currently we’re trying to get GPS enabled collars onto both fox species and Pallas’s cats, thus beginning to understand their use of the landscape at a level of detail that has never been done before. The GPS collars are scheduled to turn on every 5 hours and take a GPS location. After weeks and months (and eventually years) of data are accumulated, the thousands of GPS locations help define habitat use and movement patterns of the species that wear the collars. Comparing the data across species helps define the commonalities and differences between them. There are many other aspects of behavior and ecology that can be analyzed, but I’ll save the lecture for another time. Suffice it to say, catching wild animals serious business. Animal welfare is always foremost in my mind; but the challenge of it all can be quite fun. Matching wits with the carnivorous denizens of the Tibetan Plateau. I’ve copied an excerpt from an e-mail written to Julie below. I think it provides a nice description of a day in the life of this kind of field work.

A Tibetan Fox ignores the bait and the trap. Bugger.

Applying a scent lure to one of our Pallas's cat box traps. Perfumes and such have been successfully used in the capture of other cat species, we thought we'd give this a try.

“Yesterday (the 5^th) was quite an eventful and busy day, for multiple reasons. I think I mentioned in the last e-mail that we had set some leg-hold traps around a Pallas’s cat den. Well, by the 1 AM checkup (or 1:30 AM in Yanlin’s case) we got an active signal from the trap transmitter. We zoomed to the site and found ourselves with an extremely upset Steppe Polecat in the trap. Crazy, I didn’t even know they were around here. He was ferocious despite having both back legs trapped. I was thankful for the leather gloves I handled him with as I could feel his needle sharp teeth even through them. It was kind of fun, but a bit disappointing. We had our hands full, and it was dark, so we didn’t get any photos. However, the camera trap set up at the site caught one that I feel sums up the experience from the polecat's point of view.

Steppe polecat caught in one of our leg-hold traps. He was okay and ran off without any injuries, except perhaps a bit of his pride.

The capture had us pretty jacked up, so I don’t think either of us got to sleep until after the 4 AM check, then up again at 7 to get the day going. Long night, not much sleep, but I haven’t been that tired. Anyways, the rest of the day continued to run along at a busy clip. We got up in the morning and did some hiking around in the fresh snow to see if we could track down some other den sites. It was a glorious day, starting off with blue skies and sunshine, glistening off the newly fallen, and rapidly melting snow (maybe some photos attached). Up in the mountains I found a meadow that appeared as if Pallas’s cats had been frolicking through it all morning. Tracks crisscrossing everywhere, including a set that had been coming from the direction I was walking, but abruptly turned tail and ran, retracing its steps. I guess I interrupted its frolick. The only possible den sites found were in areas that would be particularly treacherous in the wee hours of the night and morning, likely times for catching the cats. We abandoned that for the time being and returned to the known den site to reset the trap the ferret had tripped and do our usual morning walk-by to visually check all the traps. At a possible fox den we had set up a box trap with the apple mash bait, and had the bait taken now two days in a row, but the little critter could not be coaxed into entering the trap.  We decided to set up a leg-hold trap to use that strategy against him. We set that up and then Yanlin did his first trap set on a narrow path along the river that looked well traveled by Pallas’s cats (via tracks and scats). It was a good one.

My main colleague in all of this work, Dr. Yanlin Liu. Here setting his first trap set for a hopeful Pallas's cat capture.

The Pallas's cat (also known as Manul) refusing to enter the box trap, thus necessitating the leg-hold traps.

When we returned to the Monastery, the place was abuzz with activity. You might remember that Disney film crew I had mentioned before? Well, they had arrived in force, two SUVs and two loads of people, including Tibetan and Chinese guides, a British guy representing the contracted film team, the appropriate Chinese liaison, etc. Apparently they had all heard about Yanlin and I. I don’t know what they’d heard because really, it’s not like there’s a lot out there on me, but maybe it was through Chinese channels? Anyways, we chatted it up with them, offered some advice on finding snow leopards with only six days of effort (buy a lottery ticket like the rest of us), and otherwise mundane chit chat. The day went on, I finished my sequencing work and moved on to defining haplotypes and otherwise enjoyed the sunny, beautiful day. I’ve been working mostly in the car these days as it is warmer and lighter than the cold, dark innards of the monastery complex where we stay.

Lunch break at the monastery.

After dinner, which I have to admit has not been that bad this trip, Zhala has been cooking and he’s becoming quite accomplished, I settled down to continue the genetics work. Yanlin walked out for the 10 PM check and rushed back in with the news that we had two traps with active signals…the same trap that had caught the polecat early that morning and the new trap we had set up for the fox. We went to the fox trap first, and it was a false alarm. There has been a lot of interference in the area, on the receiver, that has made some of the trap transmitters difficult to hear, that was the mix up here. So then on to the Pallas’s cat den site, where we were half expecting to find the polecat all pissed off again…instead, a Pallas’s cat!

Fitting the collar appropriately.

Having conferred with folks who had trapped Pallas’s cats before, I was told that they just lie down in the traps and lay still, their anti-predator response. Apparently this guy (and it was a male) didn’t get the memo. We waltz in there, gear readied to the side, expected to grab him, remove the trap, check for injuries, do measurements, attached a collar, etc. and be lickity split out of there… instead, we were met by one pissed off male Pallas’s cat. There was hissing, spitting, growling, snapping, the works. My first thought was, and I said it out loud, I really wish we had some drugs. I had set the trap in such a way that the animal could huddle inside the entry way of the den, to offer some shelter/comfort for the time between being caught and us getting there to immobilize it. This worked against us as he held the threshold at all costs. It was like that second Lord of the Rings movie, but without any hope for Gandalf to arrive at the pivotal moment. Here, I’ll also point out that a year ago we had done some extensive shopping in Xining to get all the gear we’d need for capturing and handling non-drugged animals like foxes and Pallas’s cats. This included a couple pairs of the perfect leather gloves. They were thick and dense, to ward off teeth, but still allowed for enough dexterity to be confident in holding an animal without hurting it and without it being able to wiggle free to bite or escape. We also had found great gloves for setting traps, etc.  They all had disappeared, and in their stead we had the best we could find in Zhidoi, which wasn’t great. Back to the Pallas’s cat holding the pass at Thermopylae; you know that my concern is always first for the animal and second for the people, but pretty equally both in this case, given that the nearest hospital is a 14 hour bumpy ride of hell, and then for a real hospital another half day of flights to get to Beijing. Yanlin and I are trying to sort it out and I start to gingerly pull on the trap, where his right front leg is securely attached. He’s not thrilled but relinquishes a bit of ground, and then with cobra like speed, Yanlin grabs the scruff of his neck, I drop the trap and place a baby’s knit hat over his head. Done, he’s down for the count. The hat helps a lot, but he’s still making some noises to express his displeasure, but even those go silent.

Taking measurements, hair sample and otherwise recording details of the animal.

I’m suspicious. I warn Yanlin not to fall into false confidence, that this guy could bolt at any time. Given that, we decide to put the collar on first, just in case. But it is difficult, his head and neck are covered with the hat, Yanlin is controlling the head and the torso and I’m trying to work around it to properly fit the collar. I’m immediately skeptical when I grab the collar that has been sized for Pallas’s cats. It has a size range of 16-19 cm circumference.  I wrap it around his neck, and sure enough, it isn’t close, it’s inches short of one side even touching the other, much less bolting together. So I return to the gear bag and grab the fox collar. Again, it is still easily an inch to 1.5 short. The fox collar is sized for 21-24 cm circumference. Luckily, I had foreseen such a possibility, and in Zhidoi (when we were scrambling to replace the missing gloves) I had also bought a length of webbing (like what you’d use to make a belt). I whipped that out and started making an extension. Mind you, the temperature is about -3 C and the wind is picking up, so my fingers are going numb (but hey, it was still balmy compared to collaring moose in -30!). I punch some holes in the webbing to match up with the holes on the collar belting (also punching a hole in one of my fingers…but it wouldn’t be me if I weren’t bleeding at least a little bit) and I head back to the cat, which Yanlin is expertly holding. I get the collar on, but I’m uncertain, the cat is curled into a fetal position, seemingly calm, but again, with me anticipating it trying to bolt, or bite, at any moment. So I play with the collar a bit to ensure a proper fit, critical for efficient operation of the collar, but more importantly for animal safety. Luckily the cat plays along, and we end up with a good fit.

It's in the bag.

Given that, we weigh the animal, in a bag, get the sex, do some rudimentary measurements and grab a hair sample. With that, we let him get, he bounds away with as much dignity as he can muster and, more importantly, without any hint of a limp or injury. This morning’s telemetry check indicated he had traveled some distance away, my guess to a secondary den, far away from the nightmare of the American and Chinese mugging. But, I hope he wanders back to his old den by July, so that we can recapture him and give him a brand new shiny collar to tell us what he’s up to over the summer and fall.”

The only mammal around to enter one of the box traps.