Wildlife monitoringWildlife monitoring is one main activity of the project team: in collaboration with local communities, hunting managers, national and international experts, we perform intensive monitoring and try to develop awareness about the need for such a regular monitoring, in order to stabilize the wild ungulates populations in Tajikistan.
The assessment of the conditions of wildlife populations and understanding their changes over time are important requirements for any sustainable wildlife management and in particular for the regulation of their utilization. For updating and completing the available knowledge the project involves young scientists from the Institute for Zoology and Parasitology and from the Pamir Biological Institute, both belonging to the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan and from the Tajik State National University Dushanbe. Assessment and monitoring approaches have been developed and tested. The development of an instruction on surveys and monitoring of mountain ungulates has been started in a joint working group of scientists and specialists from the nature protection and forestry agencies.
In addition to the scientific user-independent assessments and monitoring the project supports the development of user-based monitoring by the local managers of conservancies and hunting areas. Joint surveys have been conducted by the project experts together with local managers and informal hunters in all model areas.
In December 2009 a large survey on Marco Polo sheep, ibex and other species has been conducted by the Committee for Environmental Protection under the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan, financially supported by GTZ. The survey was organized and technically guided by the project team. Within ten days six survey teams each consisting of specialists from the Committee on Environmental Protection and its subordinated structures, scientists, game managers from hunting concessions and project experts surveyed a total area of about 8,174 km² covering a significant proportion of the Marco Polo sheep’s winter habitats. The survey teams in total observed more than twenty thousand Marco Polo sheep and more than two thousand ibex as well as one snow leopard, one lynx and about fifty wolves.
For the storage and analysis of the project’s growing amount of observation data on wildlife with assistance by a consultant provided by GTZ a “Wildlife Information System” is under development. The system is intended to be based on freeware GIS and data base software (so far PostgreSQL 8.4 database (DBMS), with its spatial extension, PostGIS1.4) and Qgis, for data entry OpenOffice Base through the data base mask and for analysis OpenOffice Calc). After being tested and adapted the system will as well serve the exchange of data with the institutes of the Academy of Sciences and with state nature protection and forestry agencies.
Available survey reports and articles:
- Survey on Marco Polo sheep and other mammal species at the Eastern Pamirs (Republic of Tajikistan, GBAO) (December 2009, download full version in English or brief version in Russian)
- Article on urial and markhor in Tajikistan (Galemys, in print, download in English [after publication])
- Distribution areas, population status and prospects for conservation management of urial sheep Ovis vignei in the Wakhan valley of Afghanistan (September 2009, download in English)
- Assessment of population status of goitered gazelle or jeyran Gazella subgutturosa north of Kayrakkum Reservoir (Tajikistan, Sughd Oblast) (December 2008, download in English)
- Instruction on the conduction of monitoring on the condition of mountain ungulate populations in Tajikistan (working paper in progress, download draft in Russian)
- WIS – Wildlife Information System, Instructions by Stéphane Henriod (working paper in progress, download draft in English)
