Dear friends!

We are excited to finally share some good news with you. At last, we managed to solve some difficulties that arose in connection with the purchase of camera traps in Kazakhstan. Our order, which we made in the spring, was canceled for unknown reasons. We found a way to buy the camera traps from the manufacturer itself, but then we had to solve the delivery issues.

Now thanks to you among others we have purchased 20 camera traps! Currently, they are being brought to Kazakhstan, to hopefully install in August.

We're sorry there has been a delay in the installation, but we try our best with so many moving parts!

We are pleased to inform you with the results of the camera traps that have been checked as part of another project of the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan. This project aims to investigate wildlife of the Chu-Ili Mountains, located in desert areas of south Kazakhstan to the southwest of the Balkhash Lake, in connection with plans to build wind farms there.

Unfortunately, new technologies are inevitably creeping into our lives and economy. Our task then is to minimize the impact of these new technologies on the landscape and wildlife. Confirming the presence of threatened species in these planned areas will allow us to adjust the location of industrial sites so as not to affect the areas of high conservation priority.

Interestingly, the investigated part of the Chu-Ili Mountains, was shown on our model of manuldistribution as poor potential habitat for manul. Visually, these mountains resemble the low-altitude part of the Kazakh Upland in northern Balkhash area, where our manul monitoring network is located and manuls have been recorded. That’s why we were curious whether any manul would be captured on the camera traps in this area.

The camera traps were installed last June and have been in operation for almost a year. Still, no manuls have been registered during this time period. However, another species of wild cat, the Asiatic wildcat (or steppe cat), was common in these desert habitats.

The steppe cat is not threatened in Kazakhstan. Species that are included in the national and/or international list of threatened species in this area were Tian Shan argali (Ovis ammon karelini) and goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa). To thank you for your patience, we wanted to share these images with you.

Please find attached the camera trap images of these species from Chu-Ili Mountains.

Thank you for supporting us!

Best wishes, ASBK monitoring team

Manul Working Group

https://savemanul.org