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)
During the month of January important meetings were held with members of livestock herder community groups and government officials on the Eastern Steppe. Ulaanbaatar-based Eastern Steppe project staff worked on preparation and follow-up to the January meetings and continued to update outputs for on-going conservation planning activities.
Eastern Steppe Conservation Analysis and Mapping: The WCS Mongolia Remote Sensing/GIS analyst continued to work with high resolution SPOT imagery data to classify land cover and land use data to update the biological and conservation landscapes for the Eastern Steppe Landscape Species. Coordination meetings were held with both The Nature Conservancy and WWF-Mongolia on the production of joint maps and conservation planning outputs. The final draft of a joint conservation vision with GIS-based support of the conservation plans outlined should be available for review in February.
Eastern Steppe Community-based Conservation: An informational meeting entitled “Collaboration between Local Government and Herder Community Partnerships” was organized by WCS Eastern Steppe staff and the Eastern Mongolian Community Conservation Association (EMCCA) on January 20th in Choibalsan, Dornod aimag (province). Participants in the meeting included local soum (county) and bag (district) governors, representatives from herder communities and from the Aimag Environmental Protection Agency and Protected Area Administration.
The event began with a poster exhibition of wildlife and natural resource status and use information collected for 11 Herder Community Partnerships (livestock herder community-managed areas). New soum and bag governors attended the exhibition along with Protected Areas and Environmental Protection Agency Directors. The goal of this meeting was to increase understanding, coordination and collaboration regarding Herder Community Partnerships in the Eastern Steppe. After the exhibition, participants learned about legislation regarding community partnerships.
During the final activity, governors, herders and other nature protection officials broke into small groups to discuss future collaboration between local governments and herder community partnerships, and how to improve the success rate of herder community partnership proposals. A total of 46 people attended this meeting (37 male, 9 female). This event was well received and is the beginning of closer collaboration with local governments in the future regarding community-based conservation activities in the Eastern Steppe.
Mongolian Gazelle: In January final preparations were made for a winter survey of Mongolian gazelle. The objective of the winter survey is to understand how snow depth, grass cover and type, biomass, and household distribution affect winter distribution of Mongolian gazelle. This information is essential to the management and long-term conservation of this species.
This survey is a component of the on-going work funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and implemented as a joint effort among the Smithsonian Institution, University of Massachusetts, University of Maryland, WCS and the Institute of Biology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences. Through the land-based survey work the team will be able to develop a relationship between habitat data collected in the field and remotely sensed data in order to improve upon the modeling of gazelle habitat use to include winter range. The team will also be estimating the size of the Mongolian gazelle population during this survey effort.
Donor/Project Coordination: With funding from the World Bank’s Netherlands-Mongolia Trust Fund for Environmental Reform (NEMO), the WCS Mongolia Country Program organized a “Wildlife Trade Law Enforcement Study Tour” to Lao PDR for 13 Mongolians representing the State Specialized Inspection Agency, Municipal Specialized Inspection Agency, National Police, the Airport Veterinary Inspection Department, and WWF-Hovd Anti-Poaching Units. The Mongolians met with their counterparts in the Lao Department of Forestry, Department of Forest Inspection, and the Vientiane Capital City Wildlife Trade Law Enforcement multi-agency Committee.
The Mongolian delegation reviewed relevant laws and wildlife trade law regulations, visited markets within and outside patrol areas and traveled to Bolikhamsay province where they had the opportunity to meet with staff from the Nam Kading Protected Area and discuss approaches to patrolling for illegal wildlife trade in the field and along transit routes. Over hunting to meet the demands of illegal wildlife trade continues to be the most urgent and significant threat to wildlife populations on the Eastern Steppe. These initiatives to enforce hunting and wildlife trade law at the national level will eventually lead to more control and enforcement in the aimags (provinces) like the Eastern Steppe region as the project expands in coming years.
Avian Influenza: The processing and laboratory testing of samples collected from wild migratory water birds in Mongolia, during May through September, 2008, is nearing completion. A final compilation of results is underway and final reports from the 2008 season should be available for distribution in both English and Mongolian in early spring. |
