Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Livelihood Options in the Grasslands of Eastern Mongolia

SELECTED PROJECT ACTIVITIES/RESULTS

• More than 1,300 individuals from 370 herder families were encouraged to join herder communities and supported with Community Conservation Fund grants. Since herders are nomadic, and highly individualistic, encouraging a sense of solidarity was seen as a remarkable achievement.
• Community groups were also supported by alternative income raising activities related to conservation and biodiversity. These included the monitoring of marmots, protecting gazelles and cranes and, in the summer, undertaking fencing and plantation work.
• The project has been successful in its advocacy for biodiversity conservation by organizing the first public hearings in the country, by proposing new protected areas, by lobbying for the new Law on Hunting, ending the commercial hunting of gazelles and banning the commercial hunting of fox and marmot for a period of time. New laws on forests and protection from toxic chemicals will soon be introduced.
• Amendments were made to the law on hunting after the previous law had proved to be ineffectual. The new law (2003) provided a tagging system and a certificate of origin to prove that all products were hunted legally. The law has already resulted in the confiscation of 100,000 untagged marmot skins waiting to be illegally exported.
  
  As well as the development of the tagging system, the project helped establish and anti-poaching unit, publish a hunters' newsletter, train environmental inspectors, improve interagency and transboundary coordination to control the trade in wildlife products.

• New protected areas have been established for gazelle reproduction and for the protection of endangered water birds.
• A study was conducted to assess the extent and level of illegal and legal hunting of game species, including total number hunted, seasonality of hunting, costs and benefits of hunting activities, local, national, and international demand for eastern steppe wildlife products, social attitude toward regulation, and recommended alternative control measures
• After securing local herders' participation, ecologically sound solutions were adopted to the problem of controlling populations of Brandt's vole by favoring its natural predictors (birds and foxes) and improving pasture management - by monitoring condition and rotating pasture use - to avoid the conditions in which the vole thrives. The area where Brandt's vole control is carried out has been increased by 50 percent. The use of the rotenticide Bromodiolone has been banned in the eastern areas of the steppes after an international conference on vole control organized in association with WCS and WWF-Mongolia.
• Data on biodiversity, land use, illegal activities etc has been entered into a GIS database. The project provided technical help for the establishment of the database and training in its use.
• National workshops, organized in collaboration with WWF, GTZ and others, helped develop strategy, policies and laws, share research, conduct training sessions, improve transboundary conservation, and integrate biodiversity conservation in land use plans.
• To further improve community relations the project recruited National Community Volunteers (NCV) to act as mediators with local population in the locations where project activities were talking place. The NCVs were hired for 3 years as UN Volunteers through the UNV programme and were given training to enable them to disseminate project information, conduct public awareness campaigns, support local implementation of project activities and help developed protected area and buffer zone management plans.
• Four environmental clubs have been established in schools to promote environmental education and build awareness of environmental protection.
• To combat the over-exploitation of vegetation for medicinal and fuelwood needs the project helped establish tree nurseries and organised experimental projects to encourage villagers to grow rare medicinal plants and plant fruit trees.

Legal

• Amendments were made to the law on hunting. (See above)
• Amendments to the Environmental Protection Law in 2005 gave local people the right to use and possess natural resources in specific areas and benefit from their use but at the same time gave them the obligation to protect the areas against illegal logging, hunting and fire.

Communications

• A nucleus of four information centres, established before the CCF projects, has been expanded to 17 in towns and villages and other 22 in the countryside. The centres supply information and educational materials to local people and provide a venue for training and meetings.
• A mobile public campaign - using a 'gazelle car' -was used as an efficient way to reach herders' settlements spread over a large areas.

Training

• Capacity training provided to biology teachers resulted in the creation of a new advocacy group in defense of the environment. Biology teachers wrote to their governor to express concern over the construction of a bridge.
• The project has supported the development of professional training for rangers and completion of a training course was made mandatory in the new Environmental Protection Law.
• The project developed a fire management plan - which built upon a previous plan formed during a GTZ fire prevention project - and also built local and regional capacity to prevent fire though workshops for fire and civil defense departments, and local governments

Seminars and workshops

• "Eastern Mongolian Ecosystem" in 2000,
• "Legislation and current management statement and future perspectives" in 200 2,
• "Research project outputs and biodiversity conservation" in 2002,
• "Incorporation of biodiversity into local land use planning" in 2004,
• Legal and administrative status of protected areas in Mongolia. 2003
• International conference on conservation of Mongolian gazelle. 1999
• The project collaborated with WCS, the Sustainable Grassland Management Project and USAID to organize an international workshop on Brandt's Vole management.

Publications and broadcasting

• Guide books on fish, reptiles and amphibians, and common plants based on the results of research projects.
• Booklets on natural resources and natural history.
• Teacher's manual on ecological principles - the first in the country - displaying examples from Mongolia, produced and used for training biology and ecology teachers.
• Eastern Steppe Ecosystem Scientific Journal, published once,
• Two publications - "Eastern Mongolian Ecosystem" and "Eastern Mongolian Biodiversity and Rangeland Conditions" - were published and distributed to the public and target audiences to disseminate the project's research findings and outputs.
• "Hunting Newsletter" was published once, and 8,000 copies were distributed to herders living near or within the area where marmots are found. This newspaper was highly appreciated from local herders.
• Series of posters showing mammals, birds, rare species in Eastern Mongolia, ecological theory for school teachers, posters and brochures displaying protected areas,
• Findings of a research on climate change in Eastern Mongolia, based on the statistical analysis of 60 years of meteorological data, have been compiled in a book
• Regular radio and TV programs were broadcasted in the eastern region on wildlife species, notably migrating birds, in the Eastern Steppes, on project activities and results, on the tagging system and the amendments to the Law on Hunting, and educational programs on endangered species. Videos on wildlife of Eastern Mongolia were distributed to national and local TV companies, and to high schools in the Eastern areas.

Partners

Ministry of Nature and Environment (http://www.mne.mn/) , the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) http://www.epa.gov and Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring Agency (HMEM) of the MNE.

Research activities were conducted by: Institute of Biology, Mongolian Academy of Science ( http://www.mas.ac.mn) ; Institute of Botany, Mongolian Academy of Science; Biological Faculty, National University of Mongolia ( http://www.num.edu.mn ) ; State Pedagogical University ( http://www.cmuc.edu.mn/) ; Red Deer Conservation Society; Mongolian Marmot Society

National workshops were organized in collaboration with WWF ( http://www.wwf.org) , GTZ ( http://www.gtz .de/en/) , ADB ( http://www.adb.org) , Agency of Land Affairs and Geodesy Cartography and the Union of Mongolian Environmental NGOs ( http://www.umengo.mn/)

Dedicated project website: No, but general details of UNDP work in Mongolia can be found at http://http://www.undp.mn/

Project newsletter: No

^ Back to top