This summer Rare Pride Program Manager Brooke Sadowsky traveled to a World Wildlife Fund sponsored Pride campaign site in Mongolia. Read her blog and meet some of the local leaders and stakeholders involved in a campaign to save the giant taimen fish as they work to solve some of Mongolia’s greatest conservation challenges from the ground up!

Sain Banuu!!! (Traditional Mongolian greeting). My name is Brooke Sadowsky and I’m a Pride Program Manager for Rare’s English training region. I’m managing two new Pride campaigns based in Mongolia and recently returned from my first site visit to the region. Mongolia is a unique place and the campaigns I had a chance to experience inspired me to write down the highlights so I could share them with you!

Mongolia is a country sandwiched between Russia and China, two huge empires. Not many people know that it is an independent country and it is often confused with Inner Mongolia, which is based in China. But thanks to Chinggis Khan (it’s actually not pronounced Genghis there), Mongolia was united as a nation hundreds of years ago. Our Western perception is that Chinggis was a brutal and merciless warrior; but Mongolian reality is that he was a great leader that wanted to stop civil fighting and become one, unified nation. He is REVERED in Mongolia.

Mongolia has a national population of 2.7 Million people. 1 Million of them live in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, while the rest are scattered across this large country. As you head into the countryside, it becomes less and less populated. There are small town centers where populations will gather (around 1,000 – 2,000 people) with many families living in gers stretching out into the deep countryside, miles apart from one another.

It is a country with its own unique and special heritage, yet has often been overshadowed by it’s neighbors. In fact, Soviet communist rule just ended in 1990. 1990! And thrust this nation into its current state of transition, trying to rebuild itself after so many years of communist rule.

The specific site of the Pride campaign I visited is located along the Onon River, which is one of 4 Mongolian rivers supported by a longer river, the Amur-Heilong River, that flows through Mongolia, Russia, and China. The Amur-Heilong is known as the 9th longest river in the world, and the longest Salmon river in Asia.

We are working with six districts, called soums, that are located along the Onon River – each soum occupied by roughly 1,500 – 2,000 citizens. Each soum has a local government with environmental inspectors, mayors, governors, and parliament speakers.  Each of these six soums are already committed to protecting the natural land and water surrounding their sites, and are great allies for our Pride campaign.

The Onon River is also home to one of the world’s largest Salmon relative, the taimen (Hucho taimen). Taimen populations used to stretch all the way from Eastern Europe to Japan, but is now only found in Northern Mongolia mostly due to over-fishing in Russia and China. This is a trend we would like to stop within the Onon, which is considered to be one of the last remaining strongholds for this species. But I will tell you more about the species in a second, first let me tell you what else makes the Onon River special.

Yes, back to Chinggis Khan! This statue and corresponding totem are located in Dadal, one of the six soums we are working in, which is considered to be the birthplace of Chinggis Khan. People come all over the world to see this site, simply because it’s where Chinggis came from and believed to be where he brainstormed his most complex strategies to unite the country.

When Rare talks about using Pride to motivate communities to act in more environmentally-friendly ways, we dream of working at sites like this. Within these soums exist a traditional respect, pride, and wonderment about Chinggis and his legacy. Our goal is to tap into these deeply rooted, and positive, feelings to inspire the community to protect the land where Chinggis once lived. Powerful stuff.

Here is what the taimen looks like. Not exactly the warm, fuzzy mascot species you may be used to seeing from Pride campaigns – but it is a local treasure along the Onon River and in great need of protection.

Taimen are the top predator in this fresh water ecosystem – they’ve been known to prey on anything from other fish (including other taimen) to small ducks and rodents that find their way into the water.  And being top predator also means they are an important indicator of a healthy water ecosystem – an increase or decrease in their numbers can throw off the entire balance of species. Today, the stocks of all Hucho species are drastically decreasing around the world due to water pollution, intensive poaching/hunting and over-fishing.

Taimen typically stay in one place and only migrate during specific seasons which makes them easy prey for fishermen to locate and harvest. I should mention here that Taimen are not being fished for subsistence – fish is not a natural part of a Mongolian diet – rather they are fished as trophy prizes (I saw several Taimen heads hanging inside Mongolian homes) or in exchange for money by a taimen trader bringing the rare delicacy to the capital city (which is a very new trend).

Our goal for this campaign is to increase the Taimen population in Mongolia’s Onon River by 10-20% by 2010.

Our partner in this project is World Wildlife Fund (WWF) – Mongolia. Here is the team that is based in Dadal and is focused on creating community-based natural resource management and small business enteprises along the Onon River soums. Our Pride campaign is married to these initiatives as the community engagement arm.

Please allow me to introduce the team (from left to right): Ganaa (Pride campaign manager), Davaa, Chin-bat, me, Nadaa, and BB (Gaana’s supervisor). Everyone on this team grew up in one of the six local Onon communities. This was done strategically to enhance the team’s understanding of the site, the community and their behaviors. It also lends itself to sustainability as each individual is deeply invested in the work they’re doing and the community they’re working with.

The Pride campaign is building tremendous capacity within this team. Gaana engages each member of his team for his campaign milestones. Chin-bat, who is the other community liaison on the team, worked side-by-side with Gaana during his stakeholder meetings. More recently, the entire team provided feedback and input into the Quantitative survey of the community, and it’s being implemented in conjunction with the team’s natural-resource management workshops. I am greatly inspired by their teamwork and look forward to seeing everyone working together on the campaign materials.

Gankhuyag “Gaana” Balbar is the Pride campaign manager for the Onon River site. Gaana, as an individual, continues to amaze and inspire me every day. Each day on our trip, we learned something new about Gaana; something that only made our respect for him triple. We knew when he first joined the cohort that he was once the Governor of the Dadal soum – the youngest governor ever to be elected at the age of 25. What we didn’t know was that as the governor, Gaana was directly responsible for creating the Onon-Balj National Park that covers nearly 416,000 hectares of forest, grassland, and river areas. And once the park was created, Gaana became the National Park Director and ran its administration for 4 years. He also spent a few years working in the Eastern steppe grasslands, the location of our other Mongolian Pride campaign, monitoring gazelle populations with Kirk Olson (WCS gazelle specialist) and creating a local organization called the Eastern Mongolia Community Conservation Association. This organization works closely with the community to help manage their livestock populations while training them to protect their natural resources.

Gaana knew everyone in the communities we visited, from the unemployed fisherman to the parliament speaker and police chief. Citizens from all around would come out of the buildings, or stop their tasks, to shake Gaana’s hand and catch up. As his supervisor said to us, “even the dogs bark when they hear Gaana’s name.” We saw that happen too.

Community members are extremely warm and friendly. Here some community members are gathered to watch the end of a local horse race, which we found out about as a man on a horse ran through the town center yelling “they’re coming back!” (in Mongolian, of course.) Mixed in this group are school teachers, children, government officials, park rangers, fishermen, herders, and more – they do not separate from one another – they are a united community.

They also have great understanding and compassion for their land and animals. They grew up here, they’ve seen the land change, and they are concerned. But what they don’t have are solutions.

WWF-Mongolia’s Dadal office has already done a lot of work with this community to understand what is working and where solutions are needed. That is why they are placing special emphasis on creating community managed areas so they can transfer land ownership to the community. And why training in natural resource management is a key factor, so once the community has ownership over the land, they can be empowered make informed decisions about how to use those resources. And the pressing need for more income among a very poor community that is dedicated to working hard, is why WWF is piloting small business enterprises among these sites. The community understanding, engagement, and motivation provided by Gaana’s Pride campaign will help these initiatives take hold and mobilize the community to protect the Onon ecosystem.

Specifically, we need to get local fishermen like Bayarjargal (above) to stop catching and keeping Taimen. It’s permissible to catch and release Taimen; in fact, fly-fishing is a huge sport in Dadal and brings dozens of very wealthy international tourists to the site every year. But it is not legal to remove taimen from the water completely, and each soum government has agreed to support and enforce this law. But the behavior has not yet changed at the local level.

So, why would Bayarjargal, a local school librarian, catch and keep a taimen when he is already receiving a steady salary? Maybe he doesn’t know that he shouldn’t keep it? Maybe it’s so much fun catching the fighting predator fish that it’s hard to stop? Maybe he doesn’t know the difference between a taimen and a carp? Maybe the $20 paid by a taimen trader is just too tempting to pass up? Maybe the taimen trader is his cousin and he can’t say no to him? Maybe all his friends do it, so he goes along with them? The reality is that all these reasons contribute to his behavior – it’s not linear and it’s not simple – like all human behaviors (don’t most Americans gamble for these exact same reasons?)

We believe that that Pride campaign, combined with WWF’s great efforts on community-based natural resource management and small business development, will be the necessary steps to ensure long-term shifts in awareness, attitudes, and behaviors towards saving the taimen and its surrounding resources.

>>Learn about other Rare Pride campaign sites

>>Read Rare Pride success stories

>>Click to make a donation or find out how you can help

Laney Thornton, a passionate conservationist and long-time Rare supporter, just returned with his family from a five-day visit to a Rare Pride campaign underway on the island of Borneo.  Laney’s family witnessed first-hand both the beauty and the importance of saving this critical orangutan habitat, and learned what Rare and local partner Yayorin are doing to help this community successfully address this conservation challenge.

Laney poses with Sampson

Grrrrrrggg!  is the sound that a Proboscis monkey makes.  I know that because our klotok was parked for the night along this Borneo jungle river underneath a tree in which a family of Proboscis monkeys were likewise parking themselves for the night not 30 feet above us.  The male monkey made that sound when its child started to wander off towards our boat.  Upon hearing this ominous sound, the child monkey immediately turned on its palms and headed back up to the top to its parents.

A klotok is the name of 40-foot long Indonesian-style sightseeing boats common in Kalimantan that plow up rivers taking people into Tanjung Putting National Park.  It’s in the evening that the top deck of the boat transforms from a communal dining facility into a mosquito-netted sleeping porch.  At night we’ll all go to sleep to the jungle sounds of crickets, gibbons, and the late evening chatter of the Indonesian crew finishing the dishes in their quarters below.

Klotok Laney and his family took through the National Park

Laney Thornton with Togu, Executive Director of Yayorin, Rare’s partner in Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve

World-class primate viewing happens at places like Camp Leakey, where a couple dozen orangutans seem to voluntarily split their time between the camp and the jungle. Unlike viewing the huge but indifferent mountain gorillas in Rwanda, these primates seem ready to invite you into occasional enticing relationships with them.

Whether on the klotok dock of Camp Leakey where orangutans meet and greet you, or on the hiking trail where they will often hike with you as you explore the deep jungle, this trip offered a unique interaction far different than our gorilla experiences in Rwanda.

Our travel companion this morning was Sampson, a 17-year old male who joined our hike 10 minutes into the forest.  He walked in line with us from the beginning of camp, as if he were a new member of our group.  At a couple of points in the hike, the guides allowed us to accept Sampson’s offer to hold hands for the trip for a few moments.  It was obvious from his touch that Sampson knew the strength of a human being, as he did not try to overpower me but instead allowed the lead to alternate from him to me.

Laney pictured with his son, wife, and niece 

This gentle contact was very different from the grip I got a day earlier when an orangutan sprung on me to grab my coconut soda can — a grab that clearly meant to overpower me rather than engage in any kind of mutuality.   While habituated to humans, these are wild animals doing what they want to do whenever they want to do it. Even though some of their activities include just hanging and chilling with humans, some also include things that most humans would not call either polite or gentle.

After an orgy of picture-taking, I found myself just able to enjoy the animals without the need to stow away yet another visual photographic record of this trip.

In the last thirty years, orangutan populations have plummeted due to massive carbon emitting deforestation on the island of Borneo.  And this trip exposed the fragile nature of the forest, where former rice fields that were designated to be converted back to forest in the park simply do not grow back. Instead they remain areas of open low-lying brush constantly at risk of fire during the dry season.

Where the forests have been cleared by logging or fire, low, scrubby invasives prevent an indigenous forest from again taking hold. (Photo by Jason Houston – view slideshow of his visit to Borneo)

My family’s orangutan experience only adds poignancy to the continuing sense of loss of what is visible all around us – precious habitat for the orangutans and global warming for all of us.  In any event, you can’t help a kind of “falling in love” feeling here with this orangutan community. I know we will all feel a pang of regret leaving this enchanted place and our new orangutan friends.

>>Read about the Rare Pride campaign currently underway to help protect threatened orangutans on the island of Borneo

>>Learn about other trips offered through Rare

If you are interested in joining an upcoming trip to a Rare Pride campaign site please contact Lindsay Hower at lhower@rareconservation.org.

Jennifer Thornton Wieland, niece of Laney Thornton, a passionate conservationist and long-time Rare supporter, just returned with her family from a five-day site visit to a Rare Pride campaign underway on the island of Borneo.  Jennifer’s family witnessed first-hand both the beauty and the importance of saving this critical orangutan habitat, and learned what Rare and its local partner Yayorin are doing to help this community successfully address this conservation challenge.

What a wonderful day with the orangutans!  It seems like nothing can describe the experience of sharing the jungle with these beautiful, amazing primates.  Our day started trekking through the forest with a group of nine excited hikers – members of my family, Nigel and Lindsay from Rare, and me.  About twenty minutes into our two hour journey, we were delighted to be joined by a tenth companion, an orangutan named Sampson.  Sampson, a seventeen year old son of Siswi, a very engaging and gregarious resident of Tanjung Putting National Park, was happy to have crossed our path.

Jennifer with her uncle Laney Thornton and Sampson, the hiking orangutan who joined the group on a hike.

After the usual photo opportunities and some proud orangutan posing on Sampson’s part, we continued on our way.  If you have never been on a walk, in the forests of Borneo, with an incredible orangutan as part of your clan, let’s just say that I highly recommend it as an experience of a lifetime that shouldn’t be missed.  The afternoon brought more incredible experiences and interactions with the magnificent orangutan.

Jennifer with Rare staff member Lindsay Hower posing with Siswi, an orangutan who greeted the Rare group on the dock of Camp Leakey, an orangutan rehabilitation center.

After Sampson left us to find his lunch, we headed back to the klotok, our wooden vessel on which we slept, ate and traveled.  Careful to enjoy every opportunity to see the orangs, Togu Simorangkir (Executive Director from Yayorin) accompanied me on a trail as the others walked ahead.  As we approached Siswi, we learned from some of the human residents at Camp Leaky that Tom, the dominant male orangutan of the entire troop in this area, was in a nest in a tree above.  Togu, a former researcher based at Camp Leaky, had not seen Tom in over a year so this was a rare and special opportunity for both him and me.  We called the others to join us.  Tom sat up in his nest then came down to join us.  He was quick to show off his incredibly huge orangutan body, complete with enormous orangutan cheekpads.  If we had not already been told, it would have been a good educated guess that this was indeed the dominant male.  Tom did not disappoint and presented us with great photo moments then sat with Siswi and shared a big bucket of milk presented to them by some friends.

Tom, the dominant male orangutan of the entire reserve’s troop, says hello to Jennifer and the Rare group.

An incredible moment in the wild, with orangutans completely free to do whatever or go wherever they pleased at any time, was happening now.  How lucky I was to have been there and been a part of it.  Now, sitting on the klotok, heading back to a different reality, I cannot help but know that I will forever be changed by this day, in Borneo, with my friends, the orangutans.

Jennifer “doing yoga” with Siswi on the dock before the group left the orangutan rehabilitation center.

>>Read about the Rare Pride campaign currently underway to help protect threatened orangutans on the island of Borneo

>>Learn about other trips offered through Rare

If you are interested in joining an upcoming trip to a Rare Pride campaign site please contact Lindsay Hower at lhower@rareconservation.org.