Abstract: The daily and seasonal activity patterns of snow leopards (Panthera uncia) are poorly understood, limiting our ecological understanding and hampering our ability to mitigate threats such as climate change and retaliatory killing in response to livestock predation. We fitted GPS-collars with activity loggers to snow leopards, Siberian ibex (Capra sibirica: their main prey), and domestic goats (Capra hircus: common livestock prey) in Mongolia between 2009 and 2020. Snow leopards were facultatively nocturnal with season-specific crepuscular activity peaks: seasonal activity shifted towards night- sunrise during summer, and day-sunset in winter. Snow leopard activity was in contrast to their prey, which were consistently diurnal. We interpret these results in relation to: (1) darkness as concealment for snow leopards when stalking in an open landscape (nocturnal activity), (2) low-intermediate light preferred for predatory ambush in steep rocky terrain (dawn and dusk activity), and (3) seasonal activity adjustments to facilitate thermoregulation in an extreme environment. These patterns suggest that to minimise human-wildlife conflict, livestock should be corralled at night and dawn in summer, and dusk in winter. It is likely that climate change will intensify seasonal effects on the snow leopard’s daily temporal niche for thermoregulation in the future.

Abstract: The loss of mammalian herbivores from grazing ecosystems has become a major concern,and efforts to stem such losses are stymied by lack of information on the proximate and ultimate factors influencing their distributions and diversity patterns. This research investigated the distribution, species-richness patterns and underlying mechanisms in mammalian herbivores of the Trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh, India. It adopted a multi-spatial approach to understand these issues in the little-known herbivore assemblage of the region. Since vegetation is the most important factor that determines the distribution of herbivores, first I researched the distribution and abundance patterns of vascular plants along an altitudinal gradient at different spatial scales. Both plant species-richness and aboveground biomass showed a hump-shaped relationship with altitude. Such a relationship in case of species-richness is expected, but it is contrary to my expectation of a negative linear relationship, in case of abundance. I relate this unexpected pattern to the limited precipitation and pervasive livestock grazing at lower altitudes in this dry alpine environment. I then investigated the biogeography of mammalian herbivores, and found that they form geographical groups on the basis of their evolutionary histories. Subsequently, I assessed the niche relationship between Asiatic ibex Capra ibex siberica and blue sheep Pseudois nayaur, the most common large herbivores in Ladakh, to see whether local level processes like competition generate spatial pattern of herbivore species-richness. The results showed that blue sheep constrains the distribution of ibex, which implies that competition amongst native species does play a role in structuring large herbivore assemblages in the region. Recognising the lack of information on large herbivores’ niche variation across assemblages, I also studied blue sheep’s niche width in relation to herbivore speciesrichness. It became apparent that the species’ niche varies across assemblages with different number of sympatric species, which could negatively influence the animal’s reproductive performance and population. Finally, I asked if the distributional range of the endangered Ladakh urial Ovis vignei vignei is constrained by the abundant blue sheep, and found that these two species associate randomly at large geographical scales, but cooccur at the landscape level as a result of local habitat-level resource partitioning. These results contribute towards understanding the mechanisms responsible for the formation and maintenance of large herbivore assemblages in the Trans-Himalaya and other mountainous regions of the world.

Abstract: In Chinese and English.
Note: this is a slightly expanded book version of the following report with a full Chinese translation: Tsering Dawa, John D. Farrington, and Kelsang Norbu. Human-wildlife Conflict in the Chang Tang Region of Tibet: The Impact of Tibetan Brown Bears and other Wildlife on Nomadic Herders with Recommendations for Conflict Mitigation. Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region, China: WWF China-Lhasa Field Office, 2006.
The multiple-use Chang Tang and Seling Lake Nature Reserves were created in 1993 to protect the unique assemblage of large fauna inhabiting the high-altitude steppe grasslands of northern Tibet, including the Tibetan antelope, Tibetan wild ass, Tibetan brown bear, Tibetan Gazelle, wild yak, and snow leopard. Prior to creation of the reserve, many of these species were heavily hunted for meat and sale of parts. Since creation of the reserve, however, killing of wildlife by subsistence hunters and commercial poachers has declined while in the past five years a new problem has emerged, that of human-wildlife conflict. With human, livestock, and wildlife populations in the reserves all increasing, and animals apparently emboldened by reserve-wide hunting bans, all forms of human-wildlife conflict have surged rapidly since 2001. This conflict takes on four primary forms in the Chang Tang region: 1)killing of domestic livestock in corrals and on open pastures by Tibetan brown bears, snow leopards, and other predators, 2) Tibetan brown bears badly damaging herders’ cabins and tents in search of food, 3) loss of important grass resources to large herds of widely migrating wild ungulates, particularly the Tibetan wild ass, possibly leading to winter starvation of livestock, 4) driving off of domestic female yaks by wild yak bulls in search of harems.
In April of 2006, the authors conducted a wildlife conflict survey of 300 herding households in Nagchu Prefecture’s Shenzha, Tsonyi, and Nyima Counties. Results showed that the 87 percent of households had experienced some form of wildlife conflict since 1990. The Tibetan brown bear was the largest source of wildlife conflict, affecting 49 percent of surveyed households, followed by grazing competition conflict which affected 36 percent of surveyed households, and snow leopard conflict which affected 24 percent of surveyed households. Type and frequency of wildlife conflict problems cut across all three surveyed socio-economic factors, residence type, size of living group, and economic status/herd size, and was primarily a function of location. A break down of incidences of human-wildlife conflict into three 5 to 6-year time periods between January 1990 and April 2006 revealed dramatic increases in conflict occurring since 2001. When compared to the 1990-1995 period, the incidence of conflict today ranged from 2.6 times higher for fox conflict to 5.5 times higher for conflict with snow leopards, while there was a 4.6 fold increase in the occurrence of bear conflict. From second-hand accounts and wildlife remains confiscated from herders, it is now believed that retaliatory killing of wildlife rivals commercial poaching as the greatest threat to the continued existence of the Chang Tang region's large fauna. Human-wildlife conflict reduction strategies and wildlife conservation education programs must be devised and implemented in order to halt the retaliatory killing of wildlife by nomadic herders in the Chang Tang.