Dodging bandits, eking out food: tracking wildlife in Mongolia

Wild Bactrian camels in Mongolia.Credit: De Visu/Alamy

Into Wild Mongolia George B. Schaller Yale Univ. Press (2020)

Eminent field biologist George Schaller is known for his ‘firsts’. He made groundbreaking studies of mountain gorillas in Central Africa. He was the first Westerner permitted to study China’s giant pandas. In Pakistan, he took the first photographs of snow leopards in the wild. His latest book, Into Wild Mongolia, chronicles yet more firsts — acquired through arduous expeditions into the isolated nation as it emerged from 70 years as a communist satellite state of the Soviet Union.

From 1989 to 2018, in collaboration with Mongolian and international biologists, Schaller observed some of the region’s rarest species. Discoveries include surprisingly low numbers of young wild Bactrian camels (Camelus ferus); interbreeding between these and domesticated camels (Camelus bactrianus); the narrow diets of Gobi brown bears (Ursus arctos gobiensis), now supplemented at feeding stations; the number of Mongolian gazelles (Procapra gutturosa) lost to disease and commercial meat hunting; and the shocking disappearance of marmots. The ecological implications of these data are rarely positive.

The findings are set against the trials and joys of remote fieldwork — from dodging street thugs and countryside bandits to eking out food. And Schaller contextualizes, giving a historical perspective on the land, its people, the once-dominant Buddhist religion, the tumultuous time under communism, and links to famed thirteenth-century ruler Genghis Khan.

Rising from ruins

When Schaller first visited Mongolia in 1989, government and people were on the edge of financial ruin, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, essentially their sole trading partner. Fuel, when available, was tightly rationed. Trying to provision expeditions to the farthest corners of the vast country, Schaller faced shop shelves empty apart from the occasional box of matches or packet of cigarettes (and vodka, of course).

He rejoiced when he found a few cans of peanuts — hardly adequate to keep a research team alive for weeks in the Gobi Desert. Thrifty and field-hardened, Schaller and his team followed the customs of Mongolia’s nomadic herders, who required little beyond mutton, flour, tea and a bit of rice. They benefited, too, from the nomads’ traditional hospitality towards travellers, relishing the soup, tea and rock-hard dried cheese curds insistently offered.

A Gobi bear (Ursus arctos gobiensis) foraging. Less than 100 such bears remain in the wild.Credit: Eric Dragesco/Nature Picture Library

The team did not experience such generosity from its local scientific counterparts, whose apparent lack of enthusiasm irritated Schaller and slowed research progress. Disbelief best describes his feelings when the Mongolian snow-leopard biologist does not get out of his sleeping bag on the morning they capture and radio-collar one of the rare cats. He is no less indignant when the national bear biologist passes up an opportunity to track the rare Gobi bears they had fitted with collars. He laments what he sees as a laissez-faire attitude in many biologists, rangers and managers of protected areas he meets, fearing that Mongolia cannot save its unique treasures unless things change.

Schaller’s more engaged companions in the field often included his wife, Kay, who contributed practically and scientifically. His adult son, Eric, joined one trip, spending part of it huddled in a tent in sub-freezing temperatures listening to the pings of a distant snow leopard’s radio-collar to decipher its pattern of activity. At least he caught a rare glimpse of the enigmatic beast.

Schaller was also joined by biologists from the United States, Russia and Europe, and eventually by several young, bright and enthusiastic Mongolian scientists through whom he saw a positive future for conservation in the country. His relief was compounded when strong leaders started to emerge for new national conservation organizations and government agencies.

Schaller — with whom I have worked at various times over the past three decades — is driven by his vision of what must be done if wild spaces and rare species are to persist. The vast, fragile eastern steppe is the part of Mongolia that he holds most dear, along with its seemingly endless herds of gazelles. He is eloquent in his condemnation of what he deems gross mismanagement by the nation’s current political leaders, who allow oil drilling, mining and road-building in crucial protected areas.

Ultimately, he enjoins Mongolians to heed the rallying cry of their ancient rulers — that if the natural world is taken care of, it will take care of them.