Note: This is a draft document
Executive Summary
Tosonkkhulstai is a 4,600 kilometer square nature reserve which was established in 1998. It is administered by the Eastern Steppes Protected Areas Administration and is patrolled by 6 rangers (5 from soum administration and 1 from ESPAA). The reserve is an excellent example of a temperate feathergrass (Stipa sp) dominated grassland. It represents just a fraction of the entire ecosystem (<2%).
After a series of community consultations and workshops which identified perceived threats to the reserve and their potential sources The Nature Conservancy (TNC) began supporting ranger patrol efforts through the provision of additional equipment and vehicles to facilitate patrols. A monitoring program focusing on medium sized carnivores and marmots will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of increased ranger vigilance.
Initial efforts included developing a short course in statistics and population monitoring techniques to expose the TNC assistant field biologist to some of the tools and concepts necessary to develop a monitoring program. Topics ranged from introducing the scientific method, probability, basic introductory statistics, and basic field survey concepts.
Ranger involvement in developing the monitoring program at this stage was premature as methods and techniques need to first be evaluated and developed. Rangers will be most effective if they are able to concentrate on their primary duty and enforce the regulations of the nature reserve. Ranger patrols should be diversified to ensure that the entire reserve is being sufficiently monitored rather than focus on what is believed to be a few hot spots of animal abundance. This could include monitoring along the reserve boundary, roads used to traverse the reserve, and include household visitations.
Baited track stations would be used to detect carnivore presence/absence. Monitoring will focus on following trends in percentage of stations visited by target species. Two types of track stations were evaluated – stations with a layer of sand treated with mineral oil and stations without – to test whether the use of a moistening agent to better preserve tracks would not deter animals from the station.
Marmot density and distribution within Tosonkhulstai would be evaluated using line transect surveys and distance data and also estimating marmot density using quadrat sampling within regions known to have higher density of marmots.
We successfully monitored 45 of 52 track stations. Untreated stations had 24% (11 or 45) of sites visited while treated stations had sign at 31% (14 of 45), indicating no negative effect of the moistening agent. Untreated stations had fox sign at 16% (7 of 45) of sites while treated stations had 22% (10 of 45) of sites visited by fox. Tracks were not as clear and readily identifiable as hoped resulting in less confidence in accuracy. The use of camera traps to positively identify species and their tracks will help improve this monitoring effort. Additionally the use of photos will help enhance public awareness activities.
Marmot density was estimated by driving along 13 transects for a total of 356 km’s. Overall density (measured as burrow clusters) within Tosonkhulstai was 6.1 (95% CI 3.6 – 10.3) burrow clusters/km2. Driving twice the length will help to decrease the variation and will enable changes to be detected in shorter time periods. Quadrat sampling produced similar results (20 clusters/km2) as a previous foot survey in areas of high marmot abundance, however the estimate had high variance. Quadrat sampling will be an effective monitoring method in known marmot areas as the method is easier to implement (fewer assumptions) than distance sampling, however better understanding of marmot range within Tosonkhulstai is needed first.