As part of the “Gobi Bear” project, foreign researchers have been studying “Mazaalai” Gobi bear for some time. The leader of this project, Harry Reynolds, has been coming to Mongolia every spring and fall since 2005 to put in collars with space alarms on Mazaalai. But due to COVID-19, every country imposed a curfew, and Harry and other international researchers could not come to Mongolia. In other words, the research work of the project was interrupted for three years after 2019.

This month, the team of the “Gobi Bear” project arrived in Mongolia. They went to the Gobi Desert to put a collar with a space alarm on the Mazaalai. A researcher at the Institute of Biology of Mongolian Academy of Sciences (MAS) G.Delgerchimeg said, “This year, professors Andreas Zedrosser and Jerry Belant of the International Conference on Bear Research & Management, the Mongolian National University of Life Sciences, the “Mazaalai Protection Fund” NGO, the “A” Protection Administration of the Gobi Great Sanctuary, and a joint team of the MAS participated in the research.”

Mazaalai research lasts 14 to 21 days, and the “Life Catcher” is baited with honey and fruit jam, and bears are trapped and studied.

Mazaalai is the only bear in the world that lives in the Gobi Desert and is also found only in the Mongolian Gobi. The Gobi bear lives in three main locations across the vast Gobi Desert, across the Tsagaanbogd, Shar Khustin Nuruu, Atas, and Inges mountains in the Southern Altai Gobi desert. Mazaalai is an omnivore. However, most of the diet is dominated by plants, including rhubarb root, sagebrush, reeds, jasmine, regel yellow leaves, short limb roots, and shoots.