Mongolia – Монголулс

The neglect of wildlife in grassland ecosystem conservation may lead to severe ecological consequences. Humans use more than 99% of the natural grassland in China, but local herders’ attitude and willingness to pay for wildlife conservation in grassland ecological restoration have not been studied. This study evaluated local herders’ preferences and willingness to pay for increasing the wildlife population in grassland ecosystem conservation through a choice experiment in Siziwang Banner and Damao Banner of Inner Mongolia, China. The results show that herders have a positive preference for improving vegetation coverage, grassland landscape, and groundwater level, but they are averse to the growth of the wildlife population, and their preferences toward the issue are heterogeneous. The sources of heterogeneity include the gender of the respondents, whether they are village cadres, whether their families raise sheep, whether they are preparing for migration and family size. Sheep farmers, female respondents, non-village cadres, smaller families, and those preparing for migration are more opposed to the increase in wildlife population than the other groups. An increase in wildlife will cause welfare loss among herders. Specifically, the average marginal willingness to pay for the rise in the frequency of wildlife sightings is −21.57 CNY (1 USD = 6.7744 CNY) per year, and the total welfare loss of herder households in the study area is 1.22 million CNY per year due to each unit increase in the frequency of wildlife sightings. We suggest that herders’ support for wildlife conservation should be gained through education and ecological compensation to avoid unexpected grassland ecological consequences. Our results are applicable globally because most natural grasslands are under human use, and the conflict between wildlife and humans has been observed globally.

Despite the essential role that vertebrate scavengers play in ecosystems, most studies have been conducted in Europe and North America, and there is a lack of information on vertebrate scavengers in vast regions of the world. Our aim was to describe the functioning and composition of the unknown vertebrate scavenger assemblage in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, and determine how carcass size and habitat type affect species composition and carrion use. We monitored carcasses with camera traps and we also conducted observation points to survey the raptor community and identify the proportion of raptor species making use of the carcasses. We recorded eight vertebrate scavenger species (five birds and three mammals) by camera trap and seven raptors at observation points. Over half of the raptor species recorded at the observation points were also found feeding on carrion. The two most threatened species were only recorded in the mountain habitat. Furthermore, scavenger abundance and consumption rates were higher at large carcasses. This study highlights the importance of scavenging by raptors and other vertebrate scavengers for carrion elimination in ecosystems with extreme climatic conditions.

The increasing animosity towards wolves (Canis lupus) by livestock-keeping nomads in Mongolia and the accompanying conflicts highlight the urgent need for knowledge about the feeding behavior of wolves, since information on the feeding ecology of wolves in Mongolia is rare, especially in the mountain taiga and mountain forest steppe regions of Northern Mongolia. Those regions are characterized by a relatively high wildlife diversity and are sparsely populated by humans. To face this problem, 137 wolf scats were collected in the Khentii Mountain range in Northern Mongolia between 2008 and 2012. Almost all wolf faeces contained remnants of wild ungulates, which made up 89% of the consumed biomass. Siberian roe deer (Capreolus pygargus) was the most important and positively selected prey species. It was followed by red deer (Cervus elaphus) and wild boar (Sus scrofa), which was negatively selected by wolves. Wolves also fed on buffer prey species such as lagomorphs and small mammals. No evidence of domestic ungulates was found in the wolf diet. Thus, near-natural habitats with a diverse fauna of wild animals are important to limit livestock depredation.