Eastern Steppe Living Landscape Project - Sustaining Wildlife and Traditional Livelihoods in the Arid Grasslands of Mongolia

Wildlife Conservation Society
www.wcs.org  

Living Landscapes Program (LLP)

The WCS Eastern Steppe project staff spent much of October participating in informational meetings with project partners to discuss the outputs from the 2008 field seasons. Much work was also done compiling and finalizing activity reports. More details are provided below.

Eastern Steppe Conservation Planning: English and Mongolian versions of the final reports from the GIS training program held in Dornod Aimag in Sept. 2008, were completed in October and will be distributed to participants next month. These training sessions were designed to provide our project partners with the knowledge/skills necessary to apply the kind of information they are collecting in their Protected Area Authority and Land Agency offices to conservation planning on the Eastern Steppe.

Collaborative Wildlife Protection in Numrog Strictly Protect Area (SPA): A final draft of the English language version of the report from the September, 2008, "Wildlife Law Enforcement Training Review" held in Numrog SPA for field staff from both the State Border Defense Agency (SBDA) and the Protected Area Authority (PAA) was completed in October. It is currently being translated into Mongolian and will be distributed to training participants and our SBDA and PAA project partners in November.

Eastern Steppe Community-based Conservation: The proceedings from the April 2008, workshop on "Community Based Wildlife Conservation in Mongolia: Successes and Lessons Learned" was finalized, printed and distributed to over 50 participants and interested parties in October. Community visit and field trip reports from July are near completion and the write up of the Community Volunteer Ranger Training which took place in September, 2008, is under way.

WCS Eastern Steppe project staff are in the process of planning a Nov. field trip which will involve focused visits to five community groups to evaluate the implementation of the wildlife monitoring protocols developed with communities July through September, 2008. On October 31, 2008, WCS Eastern Steppe project staff will present the Eastern Steppe Landscape Species and play the "habitat loss" game with 3rd grade students at the International School of Ulaanbaatar as part of their unit on "sharing our planet".

WCS Field Veterinary Program

Avian Influenza (AI): In October the WCS avian influenza project staff held a series of meetings with specialists in the Ornithology Laboratory at the Institute of Biology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences and the State Central Veterinary Laboratory (SCVL) to go over the accomplishments of the 2008 field season, discuss the plans for sample testing and preliminary plans for the 2009 field season. All of the samples collected during the 2008 avian influenza field season (May 12 through September 7) were delivered for testing to relevant laboratories in October.

During the 2008 field season a total of 1,377 wild migratory birds were captured for sampling. From this total, 1,376 duplicate tracheal and 1,375 duplicate cloacal swabs were collected for RT-PCR and virus isolation testing and 1,150 serum samples were collected for serological testing for AI. An additional 4,737 samples were collected for genetic analysis and 5,956 feathers and 3,542 toe nail samples were collected for stable isotope analyses. The samples collected for RT-PCR and virus isolation tests have been exported to the U.S. and will be processed in laboratories at the University of California, Davis. Another set of samples has been exported to the University of Hong Kong.

Meetings were also held in October with the World Bank AI Project, Department of Veterinary Services, Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry and the SCVL to discuss future collaboration around wild bird surveillance activities in Mongolia. Specific requests were made for WCS assistance in the area of training for veterinarians, ornithologists and students to build national capacity in AI surveillance in wild birds.

Mongolian Gazelle and Foot and Mouth Disease: In September 2008, 36 serum samples were collected from Mongolian gazelle during the capture and collaring efforts conducted as part of the research project on the movement and migration of Mongolian gazelle. In October the serum was submitted to the Institute of Veterinary Medicine in Ulaanbaatar and tested for evidence of exposure to the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) virus. All of the samples were negative for FMD wild type antibodies indicating that these animals had no recent exposure to the FMD virus.