Now that it is winter and the long-eared jerboas are hibernating, our jerboa EDGE Fellow, Uuganbadrakh is concentrating on studying for his Master’s exams at the National University of Mongolia. He recently sent us this account of his daily life in Mongolia.  

My house is on the city edge and I take 40 minutes by microbus or an hour by bus between my house and school or my work place at the Steppe Forward Program.
When I go by bus, it is cheap, but takes a long time as there is normally a long wait at the bus station and on the bus. Especially, to go by bus in winter is very difficult.

Due to traffic jams and overloading, people are waiting for a long time at bus stations.

Mongolian general transportation-the microbus

The bus is often standing room only 

Sometimes to go home during traffic jam I spend a very long time in the bus. But when I go by microbus, being a person with low income like me it is difficult. But sometime when I am late to go home, I go by microbus. I hardly never use a taxi- I only go by taxi to collect field study things in spring.

Traffic jams often occur in Ulaanbaatar city, increasing air pollution.

I study on my master lessons 8 hours every week and my favorite lesson is statistics because I am an ecology and conservation biologist. If person who work in this field make a scientific study and doesn’t know general statistic concept, he can’t do good research. Therefore I participate in this lesson actively. Now I am learning MINITAB 13, JMP IN 5.1 programs for statistics analysis and EstimateS 8.0 program for species diversity measures.

I am thinking, this summer I will learn MARK 4.3 and the arcGIS 9.0 program- both are very important programs for my research. As for my work, I do this according to my project plan. However to do my work, we have a problem which is that my room is colder than other rooms. Therefore if we sit up long time, we begin cold and to this occasion we play table tennis.

In my work the most important thing is language knowledge because I use English in my every work. Therefore to improve my English skills I am involved in an English training center by EDGE program support. Every week I study 10 hours English on training center and as much as possible I try to do my English homework. But when I have much work, I can’t do it. On week which has lot of work that is master and language training center I do it in the office at the weekend.

I have a lunch on university food place that have lunch and breakfast. It is different from restaurant as restaurants are high level serving places in Mongolia. It is more like fast food place in USA and European countries.

Foods that you can buy on university food place are cheap.  Students usually eat khuushuur and piroshki.

It is cut meat that covered by flour and boiled fat which used many times. So it affects at digestive tract system negatively. So when I eat at university food place and I try to don’t eat it.

I come back by microbus or bus at 8 o’clock in the evening after finish all my work. I live at home with a relative and he usually isn’t at home. When I come back, nobody usually be my home and my home is very cold because it is with balcony. I rent one room of a three-room flat and my flat owner rent to people all rooms, I live with a total of 13 people between the 3 rooms. Sometimes it is very difficult. But it is common in Mongolia.

Countryside students usually live in the dormitory of university and city students live at home. Since I enter university in 2002, I have lived in a Mongolian ger (a traditional tent-like Mongolian dwelling), dormitory, flat, and with relatives and friends. Many students are living like me. To find job with high salary and condition in Mongolia, I should learn English and professional knowledge well.  So if I can learn foreign languages, I will learn English well and modern scientific knowledge. Most Mongolian students want to learn and live high developed countries. But I want to live in my native country and finish my masters. You can see how most Mongolian student live from this blog. My country is developing country and young people’s life is not good. But we should fight with all our strength and chance to develop our country.

The main message I hope to give is to conserve wildlife, young people should learn high knowledge at any condition. Young age is the most powerful age of human life.

Uuganbadrakh is planning to return to the Gobi Desert to continue his work monitoring the long-eared jerboa in a few months time. You can support his field work by donating to the EDGE Fellows programme.

This month EDGE are thrilled to announce another new EDGE Fellow : Grace Wambui Ngaruiya.

 

Hi my name is Grace Wambui Ngaruiya and I live in Kenya in a small Rift valley province town called Ngong on the outskirts of the capital city – Nairobi.

Currently I am pursuing a MSc. degree in Biology of Conservation at the University of Nairobi. I graduated with a degree in Zoology from the same university and worked in Eastern province – Kenya, assessing the effect of ranch subdivision on biodiversity.

My project is on the little known but endangered and endemic small mammal known as the Golden-rumped elephant-shrew (GRES). It is found in forests at the northern Kenyan coast. Confirmed location and conservation of the GRES is in Arabuko-Sokoke Forest and Gede National Monument in Malindi. The population studies carried out in the 2 forests show that the GRES population is slowly declining hence the need to locate other populations of the species to create a comprehensive conservation plan.
In 1971 a single sighting and subsequent interviews with residents of Milimani village near Boni forest gave indications that the GRES may be present in the area.

 

My research is based on determining the current distribution of the GRES and its habitat quality in the unknown Boni forest and if possible Dodori forest. This will be accomplished by use of transects to locate the species and also by use of interviews to find out if the local people have seen the species and their view of the animal.

I am excited to do this research because of various reasons but the major one is because the GRES is only found in my country- Kenya, so I am treating it like a national treasure that if lost will never be recovered. Therefore to be involved in ensuring its survival is an important task for me that takes conservation to a whole new level.
Secondly, tourism generates a lot of income in my country therefore if the species is conserved successfully then I believe that tourists and researchers will be able to see the species benefiting both conservation and the country in terms of funds availability.

Our Mongolian EDGE Fellow Adiya has just sent us a blog on the project he has been working on in collaboration with researchers from the Denver Zoo and The Wilds, USA. 

As there is very little known about wild Bactrian camels, studies into home range patterns and habitat use are of great importance to understand their habitat requirements and threats so that appropriate conservation actions can be identified.

Here is what Adiya sent us:

My observation study intensively continued on the Wild Bactrian camel in Mongolia. Last November 2007, we put the new type of collar on the Wild Bactrian camel with the Denver Zoo researchers.

Currently, the wild Bactrian camel is distributed in the Great Gobi “A� Strictly protected area part “A� which locates southwest part of Mongolia. We have been studying the movement and migration route of Wild Bactrian camel by using satellite collars.

This time, we put new type of collar on captive wild camel at the Zakhyn-Us breeding centre for a testing its performance with researchers from the Denver zoo and the Wilds USA. In this survey, there was participated Dr. Richard Reading (Denver zoo), Dr. Evan Blumer (The Wilds), Steve Lambe (System engineer), Nyambayar (park administration), Enkhtiavan and Ankhbayar (drivers), Adiya Yad (Institute of Biology) and park rangers.

 The collars we tested had two different systems, one has satellite GPS to get information from satellite, but also it has ground telemetry system. When an animal approaches the “base station� of the collar at a distance of about 200 meters, data from the collar will be automatically downloaded to the base station. Therefore, the base stations need to be set up near the water points, because, wild animals or Wild Bactrian camel must visit the water point for drinking water.

 

Downloaded data from the base station could then be copied to the Notebooks using wireless connection Bluetooth system within certain distances such as 150-200 meters. So, we think that this new system is easier and cheaper to get data compared to satellite systems.

We planned to put the collars on the Wild Bactrian camels, however, during the trip we had van problems so we had to stop the survey.

Therefore, we discuss with the Wild Camel Protection Foundation, Captive Wild camel Breeding programme and Park administration staff and agreed to put collars and test it on the Captive Wild camels. The collars worked normally.

This time, we set up two base stations: one is near the Bogtstsagaanders water point and another one is at Zakhyn-Us breeding centre. If new system work perfectly and is stable, then we plan to put 3-5 more collars on the Wild Bactrian camel in wild population and set up 5 more base stations in Great Gobi “A� Special Protected Area.

Movement and migration study of the Wild Bactrian camel continues successfully, but still we need to be continue with ecological studies, strengthening conservation measures, improvement of habitat condition and water supplies system and take necessary biotechnological activities.

We specially thanks to the people who think and pay attention to the conservation and study of Wild Bactrian camel that there are only a few animal left not only in Central Asia, but also in the world.  However conservation issues and efforts on the Wild Bactrian camel are still continuing.

I would like to thank Bilge for helping me with the translation of this blog to English.

EDGE recently welcomed another new EDGE Fellow to the Team: Vijitha Perera from Sri Lanka. Vijitha will be focussing his project on the Slender loris. Here is what he sent us:

Sri Lanka is considered as a one of the Global Biodiversity Hotspots. There are six non-human primate species in the country. Three of them are endemic to country. Two species of slender loris (Loris tardigradus and Loris lydekkerianus) are found in Sri Lanka, both of which are Endangered, but only one of which is endemic (Loris tardigradus tardigradus).  The smaller red slender loris has not been the object of long-term behavioral and distribution studies.

 

Under the EDGE fellowship, I intend to conduct the a year-long survey of a red slender loris taxon, at the Knuckles Range of Central Sri Lanka. The Knuckles range is considered as conservation area and known as the Knuckles National Heritage and Wilderness area. Dr. C. Bambaradeniya (Coordinator – IUCN Asia Regional Species Conservation Programme) is my supervisor on this project. The results of this study will yield an action plan for the conservation of montane slender lorises in Sri Lanka’s remnant rainforest patches. 

 I have been working as a wildlife veterinarian in Sri Lanka since 1998. I attend primate rescue, rehabilitation and translocation activities routinely along with other wild animal species. The loris is the favourite animal species of mine. I have contributed for the three scientific presentations regarding primates. I have contributed to the publication of Primates in Peril: The World’s 25 most Endangered Primate Species, 2006-2008 and Loris tardigradus nycticeboides. In: Conservation International’s Field Guide to the Primates of South Asia. 

I have obtained the veterinary degree in 1995 and master’s degree on Biodiversity Conservation Management in 2003 from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. I got the Diploma on Endangered Species Management on 2004 from the University of Kent, UK. Further, I have followed the short course on wild animal health management at the College of African wildlife Management, Tanzania.

 After a life time of waiting for the opportunity it finally came last year. I got to meet one of the most bizarre and highly unique amphibian oddities that this world has to offer. What made this experience even more exiting was the extreme environment in which this creature dwells and the adventure that seemed to go hand in hand with actually seeing it.

If I think about it, I’ve spent more time than I care to admit ‘newting’ or ‘frogging’ in ponds, ditches, streams and rivers the world over, but the last few years while filming ‘Nick Baker’s Weird Creatures’ I’ve had the chance to pursue some highly specialised amphibians and this has meant upping the stakes a little and in doing so I’ve had to engage in some fairly extreme ‘herping’ while in pursuit of animals that I feel rather unfairly have missed out on the limelight usually on account of them being just a little bit ugly.

Normally this pursuit involves nothing more specialised than a net, bucket and maybe a pair of Wellingtons. But last summer found me packing torches, infra-red cameras and lights, a hard hat, as well as a serious selection of thermals and a dry suit.

I was going underground to meet that stringy and rather pallid slither of amphibious life called the Olm, its domain, the complex Karst cave systems of Slovenia.

My first sighting came during a rather bizarre and dubious experiment into human physiology. I had agreed to spend my first 24hours in the caves, not only totally on my tod but also without any artificial light source except a tiny red LED head torch, which unbeknown to me at the time was half its usual brightness because the batteries were going flat.

The original idea was to see what kinds of physiological effects total darkness would have on a human and in some way relate it to what has happened over time to the Olm. And if nothing really came of this then it had another and to me more solid purpose, and that was getting a truly intimate perspective on this animals life here in the aphotic core of a limestone mountain and in doing so gain a better understanding for the challenges that life has to meet for a truly cavernicolous existence here in the underworld.

After the crew left me and I had raided my thermos and supplies I had been trying to get some sleep at my self proclaimed base camp. But I’ll be honest with you the incessant dripping of a hundred million stalactites as they each grew infinitesimally longer put pay to that.

Some dripped fast like an expensive watch mechanism, high pitched and purring; others announced themselves with big positive dollops of moisture beating a regular rhythm; while some, like the one that kept dripping on my face from a stalactite some 20 metres above me didn’t seem to have any regularity to them at all.
On top of this in the dark ones mind plays games on itself and I started hearing things, the of banging doors and peoples voices plus every now and then a strange sighing – which sounded for all the world like the mountain was breathing (on mentioning this to a cave guide the next day I was told that this was the caves speaking to me).

So, being a stereotypical bloke and not one prepared to admit he was scared of the dark I decided to distract myself and give myself something to do. Even though I knew the film crew would be back the next day and we would film the Olm with proper lights I decided to try and get the first sighting not only myself, but by myself, which is how I found myself stumbling through the reverberating chambers of Postojna cave.

My base camp was already some 4km from the cave entrance and despite the fact that it is a very popular tourist cave I was well off the beaten track, it felt very unnatural and definitely quite eerie to be crawling further and further from my own species and deeper into an under world that we have only really just began to explore.

The caves themselves are vast; over 12 miles of cave system have been revealed here since around 1818 when the caves had started to be properly explored and it contains caverns big enough to contain cathedrals right down to the tiniest crevices that you would have to lie prostate to get through.

All this created by the busy Pivka River which dives underground close by and has spent the past millennia permeating, penetrating and dissolving its way through the cracks and fissures within the limestone.
It’s an environment where it seems rock is turned to liquid; the shadows and silhouettes of the rock formations and carvings are fluid in their appearance and seem to being paying tribute to the element that created and continues to create them to this day. For the visitor it’s like being inside a giant and overly ornate wedding cake.

The only problem is I couldn’t see any of this at the time; my vision had been inadequately replaced by the pathetic green glow given off by the 2 inch LCD screen of my tiny camera. Using this technology I tried to navigate my way along a narrow path with varying degrees of success. I guess I succeeded in the fact that I avoided killing or maiming myself by falling down any of the several drop offs where the path seemed to crumbled away into a black void, but failed in the sense that I was forever banging my head, walking into walls or cracking my shin on the any one of the thousands of stalagmites that rose from the floor like giant stone skittles.

The sound of water is everywhere reminding the visitor to this subterranean world that caves like this are very dynamic and still very much in the process of being created, in places the caves narrow and a rush of cold air hits you, belying the presence of hidden connections to the upper world. There is trickling and of course the ever present dripping. As I disappeared further into the depths, small still pools of water reflected weakly in the light of my screen and if I was to pour over them with my head torch I could sometimes make out the pasty forms of living things.

At first this comes as a real surprise to the naturalist; that life can find away even down here in the stygian depths, small blind things, ghostly pale like spirit versions of their brethren from above poke and prod their way through the silts, scavenging for any form of sustenance mislaid by the surface world.

The closer I get to one of the Pivkas fluid fingers that come rudely rushing out of one chamber wall and vanishing off into another, the more life is seen.
Here is a real energy link to my world; the water washes down with it not only decaying plant life, host to all the detritivores such as the cave freshwater shrimp, Hog-lice, true shrimps and flatworms but these also in turn feed larger creatures.

When I say large here it’s all relative; there are fish in these pools not true Troglobites but species from the surface world that have been flushed down here and manage to survive on wash-me-downs.

Small Gudgeon and Minnows dance in the weak incandescence of my cameras glow below the surface and the rather tragic almost sacrificial spectacle of an adult Dragonfly. Newly emerged from a nymph borne down the river it sits expectantly awaiting a sun that will never come, and warmth that it will never dance. Poised like a jewelled crucifix on top of a twig, it will eventually fall from its perch and dissolve into the organic sludge; a death to provide life for the other scavengers. This chain of nutrients ultimately fuels the life of 84 different species here in the Slovenian caves, some obligate Troglobites others part timers and wash-ins.

But its this life that makes possible the existence of the worlds largest cave vertebrate, an animal that has mastered the dark and the reason that I find myself in such an uncomfortable situation right now.

I can tell I’ve entered a bigger cavern but the change in acoustics; the reverberations of my footfalls don’t seem so lonely. The echoes make me feel a little spooked so I start to sing to myself, for some reason the ‘frog chorus’ seems appropriate reminding me of a warm and fuzzy world that I have temporarily left behind. Unlike the Olm I can return to the sunlight and survive.

The path now sticks to the left hand wall of the cavern, winding and hugging the stone relief like a mountain road, it falls away sharply to the right, its a short slope, not quite a shore, made up of lots of sharp bits of broken speleotherm; shards of stalactite and stalagmite are recognisable among the debris. This slope continues on for 4 or 5 metres into the depths of a pool so crystal clear, I at first accidentally dip the camera lens into it, not being able to see where air ends and water begins.

I spent a good twenty minutes slowly clambering along the shore of this sub terrestrial pond. The feelings were indescribable; part of me was on terrified of being here, the moaning sound of the river somewhere further on kept changing, sounding like voices which freaked me out, especially knowing for a fact there was nobody near. Then the occasional breaths taken by the caves put me right on edge, without my sense of vision this monkey was wrestling to squeeze some sense out his remaining faculties and failing.

I truly wanted to run back the way I came, only running out was not an option, even walking was impossible, I would still have to travel a good 2km further just to get to the main tourist area, it was probably out of hours which meant I would have to use one of the emergency phones to call someone to come the 4km from the cave entrance to the pick up point and it may well be the middle of the night there was no way of telling (the producer had deliberately removed my watch). So I had no real option than to try and connect with the inner ‘pond dipping’ child that had always dreamed of this moment, the chance to find a real live Olm, in situ.

Then after I had caused a mini rock slide with my clumsiness I see a pallid form move, ever so slightly just a few centimetres below the surface and close enough to touch. At first it’s just a snout, looking much like dead flesh, more like disembodied human finger tip, which immediately seemed to take offence to my accompanying glow, an experience that to a creature that had almost certainly never seen light in 60 years or more, would have seemed as rude as a flashlight in the face.

I of course automatically use the word ‘see’ here but of course this is probably not really true in the sense of the word. Looking at the strange ‘moomin like’ head peering (there I go again with references of vision) out from the rocks I can just make out two grainy patches of pigment on the animals head. These are where its eyes should be, but weirdly for an animal that is an obligate cave dweller, they are not totally useless, in fact these redundant eyes are along with many other parts of the animas body, photosensitive. Yet another curiosity of this animal is that if they are taken to the surface and kept in the light they not only darken (they still retain the ability to produce melanin) but the cells of the eye patch migrate towards the skins surface and the animal develops simple eyes again (although how good they really are remains the topic of debate).

My first Olm was certainly being very photosensitive and with a slow and deliberate effort it, centimetre by centimetre pulled its body out from hiding.
I was truly knocked out by how long they really are, like those who know what I’m talking about it looked like a pale extruded version of its closest relative on earth – the mud puppy from the USA.

First the end of the head was announced by a tuft of fluffy gills on either side, my imagination filled in the colours as I had seen pictures of these animals before and had kept albino axolotls, but nothing quite prepares you for the satiny grace of their movement, as they gently pulsed with each forward movement made by their owner in the water. Next up the equally spindly front limbs, complete with three blunt rounded toes, gently treading on the silt covered rocks, leaving tiny hieroglyphics in the fine sediment, the whole effect looking for all the world like this creature was walking in moon dust.
Then it seemed to take for ever for the rear legs to appear, With an adult animal measuring somewhere in the region of 30cm from tip to tip, there is an inordinately long stretch of body between the front and rear limbs of an Olm, and when they finally appear they are like little blanched crotchets with only two toes.

Then by the time the tip of the tail had left the hiding place the head was beginning to reach the edge of the range of my infra-red camera and the sallow Olm slid back into the darkness it was so much happier in.

I was reminded at this point of a quote I had heard that
“The Olm has traded extinction with another form of oblivion� a reference to the moment when the precursors to these unique amphibians were originally flushed down into this seemingly inhospitable environment.

The whole experience lasted only a few moments but they are seconds that I will never ever forget. I had finally met the Olm also known as the White Mocheril or Human fish.

This however is only a small part of my story. We did film here in this very pool some 18 hours later and despite the small size of the water body, a surreal snorkel in the water revealed 50 or so Olm’s living their slow motion lives below the surface, most the size of the adult I had already seen but some tiny ones too looking like tiny white threads of cotton, impossibly delicate among the large and sharp rubble they lived in.

Once exposed to my light they quickly retreated into crevices the only signs they were there being a tail or head peaking out here and there. But no matter how hard I searched I couldn’t seen any other signs of life in this particular pool, not like those that were plumbed in to the main flow directly. Why? Had the Olm’s eaten everything? Hunted every last invertebrate down with their highly developed sense of smell and electroreceptors?

I guess this is all part of the mystery; some say this animal can live for 9 years or more without ingesting anything but its own sloughed skin. It certainly has an interesting metabolic trick which allows it to be incredibly economic with its energy bill.

Perhaps these animals wait for floods that cause the rivers to go into spate and flush new life into these pools or even move the Olm’s onto more productive pools, being passed around the honey-combed world at the whim of the waters – who knows. Seeing this animal conjures up all manner of questions and makes the imagination run riot as to exactly how they live their lives down here and you can just imagine how the first Olm’s washed out from the cave systems into our world were thought to be embryonic dragons spewed forth from some mysterious underground lair.

The story of the almost apparitional Olm is even more peculiar than all of this. Suffice to say in the black depths lives the White Olm and in the lit environs of the surface in the white Karst region of the country lives a sub-species even rarer and more mysterious than its white cousin it of course is the Black Olm.

‘What’s Black without white and what’s Dark without light�

But that dear bloggers is another story!