Where the wild is protected

44,000 km²about the area of Denmark

The only place where the Gobi bear survives. As a Strictly Protected Area, it carries a higher level of protection than a national park, with access tightly controlled — and securing that access is the first step of any expedition here.

• Mazaalai — Gobi Bear

27,000 km²larger than Wales, and the biggest national park in Mongolia

A great mountain range rising out of the South Gobi, where ibex, snow leopards and bearded vultures inhabit the rocky slopes. Yolyn Am cuts deep into these mountains, forming the park’s best-known gorge.

• In search of the Snow Leopard

7,000 km²four and a half times the area of Greater London

The first protected area in the world created specifically for snow leopards. Its protection followed years of campaigning by local herders and conservationists, eventually removing mining from the reserve while allowing traditional herding to continue. Tost also links major protected landscapes across the South Gobi, forming an important corridor for snow leopards.

• In search of the Snow Leopard

4,300 km²nearly three times the area of Greater London

A remote landscape of taiga forest, mountains and summer grazing grounds near the Siberian border. Tsaatan families still move through it seasonally with their reindeer, changing camp as the herds move between different pastures. The area is shaped as much by this pastoral life as by the forests and mountains themselves.

• Tsaatan, Reindeer Herders of the Taiga

1,888 km²slightly larger than Greater London

A mountain range west of Lake Khövsgöl, protected for its remote forests, valleys and high country. Brown bears, red deer, ibex and other northern wildlife occur across the wider area, but our exact field sites are still being tested through scouting expeditions.

• Siberian Brown Bear in the Northern Taiga

660 km²a little smaller than Singapore

One of Mongolia’s strongest areas for argali, with ibex sharing the same rocky outcrops and open steppe. More than two decades of continuous research and conservation have made Ikh Nart an unusually good place to observe both species in the wild.

• Argali, Ibex & Petroglyphs of Ikh Nart

506 km²about a third of Greater London

Hustai was created around the return of the takhi, or Przewalski’s horse — a wild horse that disappeared from Mongolia in the late 1960s. The first animals were brought back from European captive populations in 1992, and their descendants have lived and bred in the wild here ever since. Today the park is one of the great success stories of wildlife reintroduction in Mongolia.

• Hustai, Lakes & Steppe — A Wildlife & Birding Expedition

Eastern Mongolian steppeonly about 12% of the Pallas’s cat’s range in Mongolia carries any protection

The Steppe Wildlife Conservation & Research Center studies and protects wildlife across open steppe that lies outside Mongolia’s protected-area network. Its work includes long-term research on Pallas’s cats, steppe eagle monitoring and marmot reintroduction. Our expeditions spend several days in the field with the centre’s researchers and trackers, using the knowledge they have built here over years of work.

• Pallas's Cat in the Eastern Steppe