Uuganbadrakh, our EDGE Fellow in Mongolia, will be trained to handle the long-eared jerboa by Batsaikhan Nyamsuren, a lecturer and mammal expert of the National University of Mongolia.
Batsaikhan is going to help design the EDGE programme’s long-eared jerboa research in Little Gobi Strictly Protected Area. He will go with ZSL’s Steppe Forward Programme (SFP) team to the select the research site, and meet with eco-herders who are currently recording wild animal sightings and conducting ecological research with students who work for SFP’s community led conservation programme.
Batsaikhan Nyamsuren is one of the most experienced biologists and mammal experts in Mongolia. He has participated in many biological expeditions: Mongolian and German joint expedition of small mammals which was conducted in Southern Mongolia in 2001. He is also leading an ongoing research program that aims to study the population status of brandt’s vole (Lasiopodomys brandti) in the steppe grassland of eastern Mongolia since 1999.
In 2003 he attended a Mongolian and German joint expedition aimed at studying small mammal communities in northern and northwestern Mongolia. Batsaikhan has also implemented a research project, between 2001 and 2006, on Asiatic wild ass (Equus hemionus) conservation, which aimed to census wild ass population in south and south eastern Gobi desert. In 2005, he also worked as a Mongolian counterpart for a joint Mongolian and German expedition of rodent species in southern Gobi desert.
