Conservation and partners
The people already working here
Our expeditions enter landscapes where conservation work has been going on for years. Researchers, rangers and local organisations already know these places, monitor their wildlife and protect them. Our role is to work with that knowledge, and fit into the conservation work already happening there. This page introduces who they are, what they do, and how our expeditions connect with their work.
Steppe Wildlife Conservation & Research Center
The Pallas’s cat expedition is based at their centre in the Eastern Steppe, and the five days in the field are spent with their researchers and trackers on ground they have surveyed since 2015. We do not publish where the centre is : the cats live on steppe that carries no legal protection.
- Founded
- 2018, on fieldwork begun in 2015
- Founder
- Otgonbayar Baatargal
- Pallas’s cat
- Occupancy and camera-trap surveys, a diet study published internationally, and four cats followed on GPS collars
- Steppe eagle
- Four consecutive years of breeding surveys — over a hundred nests found
- Marmots
- Hunted out locally, then reintroduced from 2019 — fifty released, and young born to the first families
- The ground
- Open steppe with no protected status — only about 12% of the Pallas’s cat’s Mongolian range has any
Hustai National Park Trust
The park’s Research and Training Unit monitors the takhi and the wider ecosystem at Hustai. Its biologists study the horses’ breeding, movements and social groups, alongside the park’s other wildlife and vegetation. This work guides the long-term management of a population first returned to Hustai in 1992.
- Trust established
- 2003
- Takhi reintroduction
- The first horses arrived in Hustai in 1992
- Main work
- Takhi monitoring, wildlife surveys, vegetation research and conservation training
Ikh Nart
Ikh Nart Nature Reserve
The reserve is protected on the ground by its own team, based at the research camp inside it. Its rangers patrol the reserve, monitor wildlife and support long-term research with Mongolian and international partners. Our days in Ikh Nart are guided by the people responsible for protecting this landscape throughout the year.
- Where
- Dalanjargalan, Dornogovi
- Long-term research
- Continuous at Ikh Nart since 1999, with Mongolian and international teams
- Birds
- 154 species recorded in the reserve
- Main work
- Ranger patrols, wildlife monitoring, research coordination and community-based conservation