|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:39:25 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. On the ride home, I asked more about Altan's bed-hair look. Why would a desert-dwelling grizzly end up having fur at least as thick as that of a grizzly roaming the Arctic? "Winters are long here." Proctor answered, "and temperatures sink far below zero. Without deep soil to tunnel into for a den, these bears have little choice but to find a shallow cave and sleep partly exposed." In other words, mazaalai can't dig a bear-size burrow because every mountainside in the GGSPA is pretty much all stone. They can't find a hollow tree to crawl into either, there being no forests other than the rare oasis poplar grove. If you watch coastal salmon-feasting grizzlies in late fall, you'll see their butts jiggling like jelly as they walk. Those animals go into their winter dens with a body fat ratio of close to 50 percent. Rocky Mountain grizzlies that have been gobbling berries through the late summer and early fall might be 17 to 25 percent fat before denning. Nobody has measured this quality for Gobi bears, but it would be at the low end of the scale. Smaller and leaner than grizzlies in more generous settings, Gobi bears have less body mass to retain heat. An extra thick double layer of air-trapping fur has to do the job of providing insulation in lieu of flesh and fat. A mazaalai can add to the cushion between itself and the floor of a cave den by carrying in vegetation. Most grizzlies gather some plant material in for their winter beds: conifer boughs, beargrass, heather, and the like. The few reports of possible Gobi bear winter beds describe collections of dry branches and twigs; not the most comfortable sleeping mat, perhaps, but it sounded better than freezing rock.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:39:57 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. Counting backward from the ages of the bears he had collared, Harry calculated that at least nine had been born between 1999 and 2009. Our recent capture of big, healthy, six-year-old Altan brought the number to ten. Thus, the Project had put two major sources of anxiety to rest for the moment: The mazaalai continued to meet and mingle genes. And they were still making babies that survived to become young adults, replacing members of the population lost to old age or other causes of death. Ursus arctos gobiensus showed no obvious sign of giving in. Its numbers appeared to have stayed more or less constant for the past four decades. Thus, the main reason for the biologists, for the Mongolian government, and for anybody who cared about these creatures had become this: What will it take to help the world's rarest bears increase enough to spread outward, reoccupy former range, and gain a firm grip on the future instead of just tenaciously hanging on in their shrunken home?
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:40:22 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. Before I could understand what might be done to help Gobi bears recover, I needed to understand what allowed them to live in this desert to begin with. When I'd buried my hands in Altan's fur ( Altan means golden ) while it moved up and down with each breath, it was almost as if I subconsciously craved the added layer of proof that mazaalai truly exist. Receiving it through my fingertips was a privilege, and Altan was as real as could be, but I still had no feel for the realities of these animal's daily lives. What kind of routes were they following through the mountain labyrinths and over the sprawling gravel plains? Where were they able to scrounge enough calories and protein from this stonescape to stay nourished? My intuition was insisting that this species and this environment simply weren't a fit. The only way I knew to change that was to hike the place - to take one step at a time with my eyes wide open and keep walking and looking until I began to glimpse how the Great Gobi might grow a grizzly bear.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:40:57 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. Wherever I wandered alone on foot, I found myself under the spell of two sensations aroused and amplified by the desert. The first was one of absolute exposure - to the sun and eternal blue sky; to vast, uncluttered vistas of Earth's bare skin and bones impinging from all sides; to sharp stones underfoot, pushes and probes of the wind; to more stars than I had ever seen. Outside my tent or the ger, there was no place to hide from any of it - no overhanging branches, no organic tangles, no corner or cubby to nestle into except maybe somewhere against a rock face. The second sensation was of the desert's profound stillness. Nothing moved out there save the occasional dust devil or wisp of a cloud. There was never a jet contrail marking the sky, for no commercial airlines flew routes over the empty spaces of Central Asia. The absence of motion was matched with an absence of sound. If you make a point of listening to the Gobi wind, you can nearly always hear it whisper something. But it surges and susurrations become the kind of white noise you cease to pay attention to. And when the wind that has been blowing you around suddenly idles, the depth of the silence will practically knock you to your knees.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:41:18 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. And then, fast as a shooting star, the silhouette of a saker falcon cuts a line through the sky and disappears behind a peak. Perhaps twenty minutes later, a single raven call comes echoing down one of the side-canyons. The rest is stillness again, the Gobi's all-encompassing, unchanging views and the sound of no sound. Ir was a while before I fully grasped why this stasis wasn't broken by big wildlife more often. Wherever I turned, my gaze took in such a broad span and I could see so far into it, I anticipated finding a band of wild asses, perhaps a line of wild camels, or at least a lone gazelle if I scanned the panorama carefully through binoculars. Nope. The only animals I could count on seeing were the pied wagtails that hopped around base camp picking up insects and scraps. Only once in a while did I manage to view large mammals. It was usually at a distance, and most often because I was tipped off by long streamers of dust rising from the ground where they were on the move. Many and many a square mile was required to sustain a single animal through the changing seasons and years and cycles of drought in this desiccated domain. If the numbers that I had heard listed for hoofed wildlife in the GGSPA sounded high, it was because the reserve is colossal. To hike so far and come upon so few to watch wasn't disappointing; it was the Gobi. I took it as inspiration for walking farther and looking harder.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:41:53 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. As far as anyone yet knows, mazaalai don't own unique adaptations for desert environments. They are basically built like other grizzlies. Starving camels will turn to chew on the flesh, skin, and bones of carcasses. Mazaalai can do that. But they can't subsist on the toughest, saltiest, prickliest vegetation around, and they can't drink fifteen to thirty gallons of water in a quarter of an hour, walk away, and keep going without another sip for weeks. Camels, of course, are expert at both. They digest the rough forage by fermenting it in vat-like, multichambered stomachs with the help of microbes. Troops of bacteria, protozoans, and fungi combine to transform raw plant cellulose and lignin ( woody fibers ) into usable starches and sugars, proteins, fatty acids, vitamins, and other essential nutrients. The gazelles, argali, and ibex possess the same kind of ruminant guts loaded with helpful microbes. Like desert bighorns in North America, the argali sheep are able to tolerate significant dehydration of their body tissues. Gerbils and most of the other Gobi Desert rodents hardly need to drink at all. They generate water from the way they metabolize seeds, buds, and other food, and they excrete very little liquid in their concentrated urine.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:42:22 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. Bears, though omnivorous, operate with a carnivore's anatomy, which includes a relatively small stomach and short, straight intestinal tract. This is a digestive system designed for animals whose diet consists chiefly of meat and other animal tissues - concentrated energy food that doesn't require a lot of processing. To obtain a similar level of nutrition from a largely vegetarian diet, Gobi bears can't just compensate by eating more plant bulk. They have to high-grade what's available, seeking out the richest parts of the most palatable species.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:42:40 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. I had seen a fair amount of sprouting wild onions as well as new clumps of low-growing Stipa gobicum grass during my walks. The bears grazed both these species, and all of us chopped up the wild onion to sprinkle on our dinner noodles. When newly sprouted, both types of plants are at their richest in carbohydrates and protein and hold the most liquid. According to Schaller, the moisture content of the onion shoots during spring is 86 percent; in the blades of the Stipa, 67 percent. The more the bears can find, the less often they have to trek to an oasis for water. If the summer rains prove generous, some onion and Stipa will continue sprouting and growing all season and into the fall. Another source of high-energy green food the bears grazed were the sprouts and lower stalks of the tall Phragmites reeds ( technically, a species of grass ) that flourish in beds at a number of the springs. Grasslike sedges grew from moist soil close to the water's edge, and I saw evidence of recent feeding on them. Brown bears round the Northern Hemisphere eat young sedges. So do most resident ungulates. The GGSPA oasis held so many kinds of fresh tracks that I couldn't be sure which animals had been grazing down the sedges, but the mazaalai surely took part.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:43:01 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. As the days warmed, I found the desert's ordinarily quiet surface becoming more and more animated by the scuttlings of toad-headed agama lizards three to six inches long, ground beetles, and other insects. I often noticed as many as half a dozen wingless grasshoppers within a few yards once I honed my search image for them a bit during strolls. Resembling pudgy flightless crickets, they walked slowly and were easy to catch. From a passing bear's point of view, it would be as though somebody had randomly scattered nougats with a protein content on par with red meat across the desert floor. To the bears' plant diet, I could now add some amount of the following animals: carabid and tenebrionid beetles, ants, and wingless grasshoppers. Schaller and Miji had identified lizards, gerbils, hamsters, jerboas, and other, unidentified rodents in mazaalai scat along with an assortment of remains scavenged from ungulate carcasses. Bit by bit, pawprint by digging crater by turd speckled with beetle shells or grasshopper legs, I was beginning to form a mental picture of real grizzly bears moving through Thirstland from one source of concentrated food to another. Were there enough such sources to be found from early spring through late fall? Amgaa summed up the answer simply and, I think, best. He wasn't speaking of a year or even a few years. He was talking about the long run when he said, "if the weather is good, the bears will survive. If the climate is changing so the weather is not good...."
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:43:23 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. After several slow days with no bear activity reported near the trap sites, Hunter Causey, the volunteer hydrologist, went out to set a PVC pipe with calibrated markings among the reeds of Shar Khuls to serve as a gauge of the water level in the oasis. In trying to drive the pipe into the ground, he was met by a solid field of underlying ice. His discovery pointed to the possibility that this Gobi permafrost layer, insulated by the reed's roots and a thick mat of decomposing stalks, might reliably deliver meltdown even through a severe spell of drought. When a small crew went with Hunter to install a PVC pipe gauge in the Tsagaan Tokhoi canyon where water collected, I hiked on far up the course of the wash. After bouldering through one narrow section, I reached a fork where the rock had eroded into hoodoos - odd spires and towering walls honeycombed with shallow caves. Gale-force gusts surging up this deeply cut reach of the canyon turned the hoodoos into giant wind instruments. The place shrieked and wailed and uttered prolonged, anguished moans, as if I'd stumbled into the Gorge of Lost Souls. And not necessarily on my home planet. A moon two-thirds full stood in the ribbon of daylight sky above the slot like a second, unearthly sun. In my imagination, the cave-pocked cliffsides were mutating into high-rise apartments of an alien culture.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:43:56 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. While the open desert wasn't familiar to me yet, it was a hundred times more familiar than this abode of eerie stone voices. I was now countless twists and turns and drops of the canyon away from the van. All at once I felt beyond alone, isolated from every trace of normalcy. I tried to laugh off the strange emotions welling up inside - until the sound of a cry behind me swelled so clearly and so close that I instinctively reached for my knlfe. It was only a sudden barrage of wind currents strumming a set of peculiar undercut curves in the wall. That had to be what it was. But I was becoming less and less sure of anything. I made a hasty U-turn and hiked back down the canyon. The night was another warm one. Cori caught about thirty bats. We breakfasted on marrow soup in the morning, and the day grew baking hot by noon. Once again, we were hanging out waiting for a report from Puji. The moto-ranger was overdue. Midafternoon had arrived by the time he rolled in to tell us that the Khotul Us trap had another bear in it. We arrived there around 5 pm. The mazaalai was a female. She already had a name: Borte, Genghis Khan's first and principal wife - the empress. The Queen of queens.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:44:18 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. Harry and the crew first caught Borte in 2006, when she was seven years old and weighed 163 pounds. Now, five years later, she weighed only 128 pounds. This was the smallest adult female grizzly I had ever seen. While my heart was going out to this tough, skinny little bear lying amid our boots and the stones and dust of Thirstland, Borte was apparently metabolizing her drug dose much faster than normal. Without warning, she suddenly raised her head high and staggered to her feet. This happened while Proctor was still straddling her, tightening the last bolt on the new radio collar around her neck, and the rest of the crew was all crowded around logging data or taking photos and video. One second, the Queen lay dead still, helpless and bedraggled, walled in by a huddle of humanity; the next, panicked people were dropping equipment on the ground and fleeing every direction while Borte whirled and swiped drunkenly at the air around her. She stumbled and went down again, but then struggled back to her feet to slowly wander in circles next to the box trap. After half an hour, she had regained enough muscle control to begin walking away down the canyon. Before Borte went very far, she neared the camera Joe had set up along the way - once again on a stake low to the ground. The last of the daylight was nearly gone now. When the camera was activated to record her approach, it not only clicked but also fired a flash. Startled, the bear bounded away. For a few yards. Then she halted, turned, came back, and demolished the camera, sinking her teeth deep into its mechanical body. Borte might have been the world's tiniest adult grizzly but, by God, she was still a grizzly bear.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:45:08 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. "The number I like best is 500," Harry said. "That's how many I've caught and collared since the last time I lost one during the process." Back when Harry worked with the Craigheads, the capture and sedation of free-roaming grizzlies was seat-of-the-pants science. Biologists learned what worked best under different conditions by a trail-and-error, "Run-for-it!" approach. They were experimenting with an assortment of veterinary drugs to find out which concoctions would work safely and effectively. Certain compounds were discovered to cause perilous side effects. Most needed to be administered at a precise dosage, which meant that the biologist had to estimate a target animal's weight quite closely. When the subject is a big, broad, toothy beast wearing a fur coat, it's extremely hard to keep perception from overruling reality. Upon seeing a 300-to-400-pound grizzly, the average person can be counted on to describe a bear weighing at least twice that much. Then there are the folks who would double that figure again, telling stories of running into a grizz that "musta weighed close to a ton." For even an expert to be off by a hundred pounds or more isn't unusual. .....There was a lot of bear to wash. The crew arranged a rope harness around the male and attached it to the lower hook of a weight scale. The upper hook was tied to a pole about five feet long. Two rangers, one at each end of the pole, lifted it into the air. A little way. Two more crew members grabbed on to help. It was still a struggle to get the bear high enough off the ground that his head and legs swung freely in the air. Others on the team crowded in to lend an arm. The scale only read up to 150 kilograms. That wasn't quite enough. The mass of our bear pulled the marker half an inch beyond the last number. Harry estimated the animal's weight at 155 to 160 kilograms - at least 350 pounds. The largest bear previously documented in the study was the male named Yokozuna, after the champion sumo-style wrestlers. This was the bear that helped dissuade Mongolian authorities from opening up part of the reserve to gold mining years earlier. ( they named this bear "Big Bawa" ).
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:45:32 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies... Joe and I convinced National Geographic Magazine to send us together to accompany the Gobi Bear Project on the month-long spring expedition in 2011. When we first set out with the research team in late April that year, I had no intention of staying personally involved with the fieldwork after the journey ended. That plan was not successful. I returned to the Gobi as an unpaid volunteer to take part in the 2012 spring expedition - and in every subsequent spring expedition through 2015.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:46:08 GMT -5
www.bearbiology.com/fileadmin/tpl/Downloads/Grants/Final_Reports/REYNOLDS_2010_Gobi_Bear_Progress_Report_2005-May_2010.pdfGobi bears are small compared to most other members of the brown bear family; female adults weigh only 51‐78 kg and males only 96‐138 kg. Their fur is light brown in color, but with a noticeably darker head, belly and legs. Patches or natural collars of lighter fur is often present on the neck or shoulder of individuals are also a distinguishing characteristic (Anon 1988). Subspecies confirmation: The best data presently available, based on comparison of one set of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) samples of hair collected from Gobi bears in Mongolia with samples collected in Pakistan, ~1900 km southwest of the Mongolian distribution, and other distant locations in Europe and North America, indicates that Gobi bears belong to the subspecies Ursus arctos isabellinus (Miller et al. 2006; Galbreath et al. 2007; McCarthy et al. 2009). Hair from Gobi bears collected during our study and analyzed by Lisette Waits who conducted the genetic assessments of the previous studies also showed that Gobi bears belong to the subspecies Ursus arctos isabellinus. 51kg to 78 kg = 112 pounds to 172 pounds. 96kg to 138 kg = 212 pounds to 304 pounds.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:46:37 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. Although this mazaalai proved to weigh only 155 pounds, it was a prize - a female Harry believed wasn't known to the Project: young, healthy, and in prime breeding condition with years of potential for making babies ahead. Her nipples were somewhat enlarged and roughened, suggesting that she had already produced cubs in an earlier year. We carried her outside the trap to collar her in the shade. She came out of the drug slowly and eventually staggered over to the nearby spring to lap at the water for a very long time, pausing in-between drinks to rest her head on the ground. Her muzzle sometimes drooped into the edge of the shallow flow that ran intermittently on the surface for a couple dozen feet. Having once darted an Alaskan grizzly from an aircraft and found the drugged animal dead where it had collapsed facedown and drowned in a shallow tundra puddle, Harry was growing uncomfortable with the current situation. "Odko," he said, "can you tell Ankhaa to drive the van closer? We need to get this bear up and moving." She passed along the message and Ankhaa motioned for everyone to get inside. The engine noise caused the female to raise her head from the pool. She struggled to get up on all fours, succeeded, and tried to charge at the incoming vehicle, staggering as she came. Ankhaa was smiling and shaking his head as he backed the rig away, happily defeated by a bear that weighed less than he.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:47:14 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. After a while I walked back toward the group. Well before I got there, I could hear the bear growling. That isn't always a sound you want to hear when you're close to a bear, but in this case it was a wonderful sign. Everybody in the team was soon up and walking around the animal, preparing to measure and collar it. This female was slightly younger than the first - seven years old at most. She weighed 145 pounds. From the smooth, unworn appearance of her teats, Harry could tell that she had not previously given birth. He said that this was not unusual for a grizzly inhabiting a harsh, marginal environment. Many in the Arctic were as old or older before they first breed. Our captive seemed to be in good physical condition and could be expected to begin producing young within the next year. Like the first female captured, this one made her way to the spring to drink as soon as she regained her footing. Interestingly, she then returned from the water to the trap and thoroughly investigated it, over and over, as if mystified and trying to put together what had happened. We waited next to the van about 150 feet away. Watching through binoculars, I thought the female's head looked oddly flattened on top. Harry agreed, saying that the hairs on the forehead sometimes become worn down or completely rubbed off during the winter months in a den. "Notice anything else?" he asked, keeping his voice barely above a whisper. Before I could answer, he did: "The claws. They're the longest I think I've seen on a Gobi bear. What's she been eating? It doesn't look as though she's been digging at all."
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:47:46 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies. As if becoming aware for the first time that she had company, the bear began walking directly toward us. We jumped in the van and eased away. She kept coming, all 145 damn-the-consequences pounds of her. We drove farther down the wash, and she kept right after us. With its carrying rack, the top of the van was nearly eight feet off the ground and almost three times as long as she was. She was three feet high at the shoulder, still weak and stumbly, and intent on having it out with this giant metal contraption, never shying to one side or even pausing when its engine growled. How could she not be intimidated in the slightest? What internal fires cook up audacity of this order? But as far as our fierce little loopy female could tell, her plan was working. She had us in full retreat. A couple hundred yards down the wash, she decided at last to let us be. Tuning into a side-canyon, she disappeared behind a thicket of caragana and Zygophyllum. Good on you, Ms. Gobi Bear. We'll add yet another to the number of mazaalai born since the Project began and now thriving as an adult. Perhaps after Odko tests the DNA samples of your fur, to be sure you haven't been counted before, we'll be able to add yet one more reproductive-age female to the population's total. Thanks to you, we just raised the number of different Gobi bears collared in the study so far from thirteen to fourteen.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:50:57 GMT -5
Tracking Gobi Grizzlies......As for me, I had a notebook with a list of questions to ask, beginning with Miji's findings about mazaalai food habits. He was preparing a scientific book about the bears. It was in Mongolian, but he intended to have the book translated into English at some point. With Bayasa acting as an interpreter, Miji told me, "The number one bear food is bijun ( wild rhubarb ), then Nitraria sibirica ( nitre bush ) berries. After that come berries from Ephedra, young Phragmites ( the oasis grass, commonly called a reed ), Alium ( wild onion ), and Stips ( the widespread grass ). Oxytropis ( O. aciphylla, a dwarf shrub in the legume, or pea, family and rich in nitrogen ) is also a valuable food. Insects form the next most important group in the diet. Number one is the wingless grasshopper, then beetles. After that, lizards and small mammals. Oh, and chukar and some small birds." I wanted to know what he had found in the way of large mammal remains in the bear scat he had collected. Gerbil colonies provided most of the meat from mammals, he said. But yes, he had identified wild camel, wild ass, argali, ibex, and black-tailed gazelles - the whole array of hoofed fauna - in mazaalai scat as well. Though their remains made up only a minor percentage of the bear's overall diet, scavenging large mammals was by no means an unusual behavior.
|
|
|
Post by brobear on Mar 20, 2017 6:52:02 GMT -5
www.vitalground.org/gobi-bear-update/#.WI8QIYgrK00 Gobi Bear Update January, 28 2016 | by kevin From Vital Ground Board member Douglas H. Chadwick From mid-April through mid-May, I made my fourth spring expedition to the bears’ last stronghold with Dr. Harry Reynolds and the Gobi Bear Project team of Mongolian rangers and scientists. The day we arrived at the Great Gobi Strictly Protected Area’s headquarters, located in a village just beyond the reserve, eight illegal gold miners caught trespassing in the reserve were being detained at the police station next door. They were the third such group – nicknamed ninja miners because they most often travel at night to avoid detection – arrested at a digging site deep within the reserve’s central mountain complex since early April. A fourth group from that location was nabbed a few days later, trying to escape on foot. That just might have saved their lives, for the men were out of water, exhausted and drinking their own urine to survive. Our crew visited that ninja mine site two weeks afterward. What we wanted to explore there was a previously unknown source of water nearby, which the miners had discovered and were relying upon. It lay in a deep canyon where fresh bear tracks and droppings led us to two small, muddy pools. The footprints of wolves, black-tailed gazelles, wild camels, and ibex also patterned the springs’ muddy edges. The threat of disturbance by illegal miners keeping desperately thirsty wildlife from coming to drink here – or at any of the reserve’s scattering of other precious water sources – couldn’t have been more clear. During our return drive at night from the distant ninja mine, we encountered a dust storm stronger than I ever seen before or imagined was possible. Gales of freezing wind turned the desert’s surface into a blinding, roaring, airborne chaos until we lost all sense of direction. It was odd how much that night’s journey in one of the driest places on the planet felt like being on a ship trapped in a maelstrom at sea. At the same time, it was a powerful reminder of the kind of forces all the reserve’s wild inhabitants have to contend with to survive in one of the world’s harshest environments. The good news is that the Gobi Bear Project team captured three Gobi bears this spring and placed GPS satellite radio collars around their shaggy necks. (They are designed to fall off after about a year.) While enticing bears into the cage traps set in place near oases is normally very challenging, one of the bears radioed this year returned to snitch the bait inside and ended up getting caught twice more. We turned him loose with our best wishes. As luck would have it, though, the second time we did this, we were accompanied by a group of more than 20 government officials and conservationists who had come to visit our remote research area. Better yet, the group was led by Batbold Jamsran, the secretary of Mongolia’s Ministry of Environment and Green Tourism, who is largely responsible for the country’s wildlife management efforts, including recovery of the critically small and vulnerable Gobi bear population. This was the first Gobi bear he had ever seen. The experience strengthened his commitment to help bears and provide additional funding and supplies for rangers and other staff working in Great Gobi Strictly Protected Area. More good news: Harry Reynolds went on to arrange for the secretary to present a program about Gobi bears at the International Bear Association meeting taking place last month (October) in Greece. The Secretary will be accompanied by two scientists who have long been part of the Gobi Bear Project team. Perhaps the best news of all to tell is that several good rainstorms swept across the Gobi this past summer, bringing much-needed relief from a long period of below-average precipitation. The nutritional content of the grain pellets provided as supplemental food for Gobi bears at the water sources they visit is being improved through the efforts of the Ministry and AMA, a recently established Mongolian conservation organization dedicated to helping these remarkable animals. Between that extra food and the growth of desert vegetation produced by the summer rains, there is every chance that the Gobi bears will go into their dens with good health and full bellies this year as fall gives way to winter. Vital Ground has been a financial supporter of the Gobi Bear Project since 2012.
|
|