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)

Eastern Steppe Conservation Planning and Follow-Up:  In February the WCS Eastern Steppe project staff communicated with aimag-level policy makers and partners in the conservation community to share information and confirm support for on-going and planned conservation initiatives in the region.  Contact was made with the Khentii and Dornod Environmental Protection Agencies, Sukhbaatar aimag Department of Development and Strategic Planning, the Nomrog and Eastern Mongolia Protected Areas Administration, Ganga Strictly Protected Area (SPA) and the Eastern Mongolian Community Conservation Association.   Requests for follow-up information and reports on patrol activities in Nomrog SPA following the September 2008 wildlife law enforcement training review were made to the Nomrog State Border Defense Agency Commander and the Nomrog SPA Director. 

Eastern Steppe Community-based Conservation:  In February the WCS Eastern Steppe project staff wrote up the report on the workshop “Collaboration between Local Government and Herder Community Partnerships” held in January in collaboration with the Eastern Mongolian Community Conservation Association (EMCCA) in Choibalsan, Dornod aimag (province).  The report will supplement the official materials WCS has collected on the Herder Community Partnerships on the Eastern Steppe which include community profiles, maps of the community protected areas, and a progress report or record of the official designation of the area as a “nokhorlol” or Community Partnership.  The collection of these materials supports and monitors the implementation of this new governance structure on the Eastern Steppe.   

Mongolian Gazelle: On 26 February 2009, WCS Mongolia Program Country Director Amanda Fine delivered a talk entitled “Mongolian Gazelle: Nomads of the Steppe” at the Fairfield Osborn Memorial Lecture held by WCS at Rockefeller University in New York City.  The lecture series was established to “identify and addresses issues, for the scientific community and the public, in conservation and biology that will shape the survival of humankind and wildlife in this century”.  The Mongolian gazelle was highlighted in the 2009 lecture series as one of a number of wildlife species around the world that WCS Senior Conservationist Dr. George Schaller has worked to understand and conserve during more than half a decade in the field. 

The Mongolian gazelle winter survey began in February and the team completed their long-distance transects in the southeast region of the Eastern Steppe by mid-February.  In the later half of February the team worked to complete the survey in the north and western section of the Mongolian gazelle range.  The objective of the winter survey is to understand how snow depth, grass cover and type, biomass, and household distribution affect the winter distribution of Mongolian gazelle.  This information is essential to the management and long-term conservation of this specie.  The winter survey is a component of the on-going work funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Donor/Project Coordination:  In February WCS staff met with Vice Minister of Nature, Environment and Tourism, Mr. Idevkhten to discuss the progress and plans for the WCS wildlife trade law enforcement project funded by the World Bank’s Netherlands-Mongolia Trust Fund for Environmental Reform (NEMO).  The over-hunting of wildlife due to the lack of enforcement of the laws which manage hunting and wildlife trade continue to be one of the main threats to wildlife populations on the Eastern Steppe and across Mongolia.

WCS Global Health Program

Avian Influenza: The laboratory results from the avian influenza surveillance samples collected by the WCS team in 2008 were received from the University of California Davis in February. Of the 2,763 samples collected from wild birds in Mongolia, 143 tested positive by RT-PCR for matrix sequences indicating the presence of avian influenza sequences.  

Only one sample tested positive for H5. This was collected from a Red-necked Stint (Calidris rufficollis).  The bird was a juvenile and was caught in a mist net at Bayannuur near Daschinchilen, Bulgan aimag on 20 August 2008. The bird showed no signs of ill-health when captured, and was marked and released. This bird was approximately 2-4 months old at the time of capture and likely hatched in the tundra of northern Russia. At this stage there is no reason to indicate that this virus was a highly pathogenic subtype.

The team did not detect any unusual mortality at Bayannuur during the two weeks at the site. WCS will, however, be investigating this sample further. The next stages of analysis will be to attempt to amplify HA and NA sequences from the H5-positive sample at UC Davis. If successful, the strands will be sequenced which should provide an indication of pathogenicity.  The frozen duplicate sample from this bird that is in Hong Kong University will also be submitted for viral isolation in an attempt to culture the virus.

Wildlife/Livestock Diseases:  Mongolian gazelle serum samples collected in September 2008 on the Eastern Steppe were exported from Mongolia and transported to the United States to test for the presence of anti-bodies to common diseases of livestock.  The samples were received and cleared by both the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service upon entry to the U.S.  The samples will be tested at the National Veterinary Services Laboratory and Cornell University Veterinary Laboratory.  The testing results will provide information on the degree to which Mongolian gazelle are exposed to common diseases that potentially threaten livestock on the steppe.