Status of the Mountain Ungulate Prey of the Endangered Snow Leopard Panthera Uncia in the Tost Local Protected Area, South Gobi, Mongolia

Status of the mountain ungulate prey of the Endangered snow leopard Panthera uncia in the Tost Local Protected Area, South Gobi, Mongolia L KHAGVASUMBEREL T UMURSUKH,KULBHUSHANSINGH R. SURYAWANSHI C HARUDUTT M ISHRA,THOMAS M. MC C ARTHY and B AZARTSEREN B OLDGIV Abstract The availability of wild prey is a critical predictor of snow leopard Panthera uncia (Schaller, , ). carnivore density. However, few conservation programmes Relatively little information is available on the abundance have focused on the estimation and monitoring of wild ungu- and population trends of these mountain ungulates, how- late populations and their trends, especially in the remote ever, because of the remoteness of their habitats and a mountains of Central Asia. We conducted double-observer lack of robust scientific studies (Singh & Milner-Gulland, surveys to estimate the populations of ibex Capra sibirica ). Changing livestock husbandry practices (Berger and argali Ovis ammon in the mountainous regions of Tost et al., ), mining and associated development Local Protected Area, South Gobi province, Mongolia, which (Farrington, ; Kaczensky et al., ), and poaching is being considered for designation as a Nature Reserve. We (Pratt et al., ) threaten the survival of many of these un- also conducted demographic surveys of the more abundant gulate species and the predators that depend on them. ibex to examine their sex-ratio and the survival of young dur- The availability of wild-ungulate prey is a critical deter- ing –. The estimated ibex population remained minant of carnivore density (Karanth et al., ). However, stable in and and the estimated argali population in the mountains of Asia the rugged habitat and lack of suf- increased from in to in . The biomass of ficient expertise have posed a challenge to the estimation wild ungulates was c. % that of livestock. Mortality in and monitoring of ungulate populations (Singh & Milner- young ibex appeared to increase after weaning, at the age of Gulland, ). Many of the established methods of ungulate months. We estimated the population of wild ungulates population estimation, such as distance sampling, are diffi- was sufficient to support – adult snow leopards cult to implement in mountainous terrain because of the in- Panthera uncia. The adult snow leopard population in our applicability of their assumptions (Suryawanshi et al., ). study area during –, estimated independently using Alternatives such as aerial surveys are expensive and often camera-trap-based mark–recapture methods, was –. unsafe in mountainous landscapes. Based on our results we identify the Tost Local Protected The primary occupation of the local pastoralists is cash- Area as an important habitat for the conservation of these un- mere production from goats. In response to demand from gulates and their predator, the Endangered snow leopard, and the global market for cashmere, the goat population in recommend elevation of its status to a Nature Reserve. large parts of the mountains of Central Asia is increasing (Bhatnagar et al., ; Berger et al., ). Livestock species Keywords Argali, Central Asia, double-observer survey, such as goats are reported to compete with wild ungulate ibex, Panthera uncia, snow leopard, ungulate prey species for forage in other regions (Bagchi et al., ; Mishra et al., ), and the presence of herders and herd- Introduction ing dogs creates competition for space (Namgail et al., ). Berger et al. () reported that the biomass of native sia’s mountains support a rich diversity of ungulates wild ungulates across seven study areas in Mongolia, India, Athat sustain large carnivores such as the Endangered and China’s Tibetan Plateau is now , % that of livestock. Conservation of native ungulates alongside a pastoral indus- LKHAGVASUMBEREL TUMURSUKH*† Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation, Peace try such as cashmere production will require rigorous mon- Avenue, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia itoring and incentives for wildlife-friendly pastoralism KULBHUSHANSINGH R. SURYAWANSHI‡ (Corresponding author) and CHARUDUTT (Berger et al., ). Monitoring of wild ungulate abundance MISHRA‡ Snow Leopard Trust, Sunnyside Avenue, Seattle, Washington, USA is therefore fundamental to any such effort (Ale et al., ; E-mail [email protected] Xu et al., ), and will also facilitate assessment of the size THOMAS M. MCCARTHY Panthera, Redmond, Washington, USA of the snow leopard population that could be sustained by BAZARTSEREN BOLDGIV National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia the available prey. *Also at: Snow Leopard Trust, Sunnyside Avenue, Seattle, Washington, USA The Tost Local Protected Area is an important corridor †Also at: National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia ‡Also at: Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore, India between the Great Gobi Strictly Protected Area A in the west and the Gobi Gurvan Saikhan National Park in the north. Received September . Revision requested December . Accepted December . First published online June . An ongoing radio-telemetry study of the snow leopard has Oryx, 2016, 50(2), 214–219 © 2015 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605314001203 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 02 Oct 2021 at 15:52:49, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605314001203 Status of snow leopard prey in Mongolia 215 FIG. 1 Map of the survey area (dark shade). Existing Protected Areas are shaded (light). The Tost Local Protected Area is denoted by dotted line in the map and solid black in the inset of Mongolia. already recorded one case of a subadult snow leopard dis- which comprise the snow leopard habitats of the Tost persing from the Tost Mountains in the Local Protected Local Protected Area. We also examined the demography Area to the Nemegt Mountains in the Gobi Gurvan of the two species, to understand the survival of various Saikhan National Park. Local Protected Area status affords age–sex categories of the ibex. a relatively low level of protection under Mongolian law, however, and it is difficult to protect the area from mining. Supported by the local government authorities, local pastor- Study area alists and conservationists, the elevation of the protection status of Tost Local Protected Area to that of Nature Our study area comprised , km of the mountainous re- Reserve is being considered by the National Government. gion of Tost, in South Gobi province, Mongolia (Fig. ). The Thus, there is an urgent need for robust information on Tost Local Protected Area was declared by the administra- the conservation value and potential of this region. tion of Gurvantes soum (district) in October , after The snow leopard population of the Tost Mountains is mining leases were issued for the region. The Protected being monitored closely using camera trap-based multi- Area has high conservation value for species such as the season models (Sharma et al., ). However, little informa- Endangered snow leopard, and argali and ibex (McCarthy tion has so far been available on the status of their primary et al., ), and is valued by the local pastoralists for grazing wild-ungulate prey, the ibex Capra sibirica and argali Ovis livestock. The temperature in the region ranges between ammon. The ibex is one of the preferred prey species of the −°C in winter and +°C in summer, and the altitude is snow leopard across its range (Jumabay-Uulu et al., ; ,–, m. The Nemegt Mountains of the Gobi Lyngdoh et al., ). Gurvan Saikhan National Park are north of the surveyed Up to % of the snow leopard’s diet in the Tost Local area. Towards the west the study area is connected to the Protected Area consists of livestock (Shehzad et al., ), Great Gobi Strictly Protected Area A via a fragmented net- and retaliatory persecution of snow leopards by local herders work of hillocks. The international border with China lies is an important conservation concern. The availability of wild c. km south of the study area. The town of Gurvantes prey has significant implications for the livestock predation and the Noyon Mountains lie east of the study area. behaviour of wild carnivores (Suryawanshi et al., ; Livestock herding is the primary occupation of the local Odden et al., ;Gervasietal.,). Thus, understanding people. Goats (,) and sheep (,) are the most com- the availability and trends of wild ungulate prey over time is mon livestock, followed by camels (), horses () and important for conservation management in the region. cattle (), based on a census conducted in (LT, unpubl. The primary objective of this study was to estimate the data). Ibex, argali and tolai hare Lepus tolai are the common population of ibex and argali in the Tost Mountains, wild herbivores in the region, and snow leopard, wolf Canis Oryx, 2016, 50(2), 214–219 © 2015 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605314001203 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 02 Oct 2021 at 15:52:49, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605314001203 216 L. Tumursukh et al. lupus, red fox Vulpes vulpes, corsac fox Vulpes corsac and (– years old), adult female and adult male (Schaller, ). lynx Lynx lynx are the large predators. We conducted , bootstraps to assess the % confi- dence intervals of the young-to-female and male-to-female Methods ratios within each survey, using herd as the sampling unit. The median values were

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