One Ranger, 52000 hectares

The day of Ts Tumurkhuyag starts early. It has to. He has a lot of ground to cover. He lights his horse dung fuelled fire, a central feature in his ger (yurt). The curving walls are hung with carpets, posters of Mongolian wildlife and medals won in horse races and shows.

He is one of only seven rangers covering the 364,538ha Orkhon Valley National Park and is

based at the Tuvkhun ranger station, at the gateway to the Tuvkhun Hermitage Monastery. Tumurkhuyag is a proud and accomplished horseman. He has to be! For years his horse was the only way to patrol the park. Now, finally, he has a motor bike.

“The Tuvkhun Monastery was the centre of Buddhism in Mongolia,” explains Tumurkhuyag after the stove is alight and tea has been served. “Let me show you.”

Fifteen minutes drive, in the National Park’s only car, and a stiff climb later, we are looking at an indentation in stone believed to be the footprint of Undur Gegeen Zanabazar, the founder of the Mongol schools of religious art and a man who was the first Bogd (religious and political leader). From the rock with his footprint, I see a panorama of larch forests and the snow clad Tuvkun Shireet Mountains, nudging clouds and 2,300 meters above sea level.

Tumurkhuyag shows us round. The small but exquisite mountain monastery complex has temples, stupas and caves where hermit monks meditate (in one case for 11 years). Raptors soar above the icicles hanging from the monastery roof, and voles scutter around the stone walls. The walls and rock surfaces are ornamented with curious plants – mosses, lichens and almost desert looking succulents. It is an incredible place. But so is much of the Orkhon Valley National Park.

Proclaimed in 2006 it covers a vast territory of sweeping steppe, towering mountains and bird haunted wetlands. This is the home of so many important species including Argali Sheep (Ovis ammon) and Siberian Ibex (Capra sibirica), Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) and Musk Deer (Moschus moschiferus). The park has a trans-national influence and reach. The Orkhon river which gives the park its name feeds into the country’s longest river, the Selenge, which in turn flows into Russia’s Lake Baikal from where the water ultimately reaches the Arctic. 121,967 ha of the park is designated the ‘World Heritage Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscapes’ encompassing numerous historical remains dating back to the 6th Century. Stone circles, granite statues, and, most potently, Kharhkorum, the 13th- and 14th- century capital of Genghis Khan’s vast empire.

You might think all these credentials would ensure major national and international support. But as of writing, they don’t.

“Even with all this natural and cultural heritage to protect, we are chronically under-staffed and under-funded and it is a tremendous challenge to manage the park properly,” G. Erdenebiley, the head of the Orkhon Valley National Park tells us. “We have only one vehicle for the entire park and just seven rangers to cover the vast territory.” I do a swift bit of mental arithmetic. 364,538ha of park. Seven rangers. That works out as more than 52,000 ha per person to cover mainly on horseback! “We at least managed to provide a motor cycle to each ranger station with support from GIZ,” adds Erdenebiley. “We also finalized our five-year park management plan last year, but there is no funding to actually implement the plan.”

It emerges during discussions with various people that a fundamental issue behind the underfunding of the protected area lies with the fact that the critical role of protected areas in biodiversity conservation, ecosystem management and local and national development are not fully recognized by society in general and the government in particular.

Protected areas here, as in so many countries, are not perceived as a priority or even an asset. They are just…there.

“We need to change this way of thinking,” says Oyuntulkhuur Bandi, the Project Coordinator for the UNDP/GEF supported Strengthening the Protected Area Network (SPAN) Project. “And we will do it by supporting the Ministry of Nature, Environment and Tourism (MNET) through enhancing financial planning and management, making the economic case for increased government investment in protected areas, and through supporting the herding communities within the park to ensure that they can benefit from conservation.”

Even Orkhon Valley, one of Mongolia’s flagship National Parks, only receives a US$ 65,000 (82 million Tughrik) government allocation per year, of which more than 90% is devoted to staff salaries, utilities and communications. No funds are available to actually carry out even the most essential park management activities. At the same time, Erdenebiley admits that the park authority has not really investigated fully what it takes to actually manage the park effectively and how much they would need to do it. “There is a need for developing a budget that is actually based on real management needs,” he says. Simultaneously, he says, the national legal framework needs to ensure increased investment in park management and to create incentive mechanisms for park administration to realise the economic potential of our park.

Currently, the park generates US$ 17,000 (21 million Tughrik) per year from park entry fees (and fines). This exceeds the official target of US$ 6,500 (8 million Tughrik) per year, but there is no incentive to collect more because none of this can be returned back to the park or even the Protected Area Administration.

However, Bandi believes that with the GEF support there is great scope for increasing park income, and says that the SPAN project will support the park administration in realizing its potential as one of the two project’s demonstration parks. Genghis Khan’s capital Kharakorum, located within the boundaries of the park, receives 25,000 visitors per year. The World Heritage official guidebooks do not even mention the national park!

Similarly, over 30 tourist camps operate in the park, but do not pay anything towards park

management. They just pay a land fee and water fee to local authorities for permission to operate within the area. Park entry fees are very low (just over US$ 2 for foreign visitors) and are not capturing the tourists’ willingness to pay. Furthermore they are only charged per visit rather than per day. There are two large gold mines operating just outside the protected area, which may be willing to offset their damage to the landscape. There are lots of opportunities for local residents to diversify their livelihoods, through development of high-value tourism ventures and value-added local products.

As in most protected areas in Mongolia, Orkhon Valley National Park has a visible, if frequently mobile, human presence. Five thousand residents with 53,000 head of livestock make their home within the park residing in four administrative districts called soums.

Bat-Ulzii Soum Governor, A. Ishdorej, is concerned about how he can support the nomadic herding communities as well as ensure that the park adequately safeguards natural resources. “As much as 80% of our soum is within this park,” says Ishdorej. “The only way for the survival of both people and the park is to make sure that we help each other.” Although grazing is permitted in some zones within the park, communities are not permitted to utilize wildlife or forest resources. Some residents are benefitting to an extent from tourism, however, financial benefits are not sufficient for people to significantly reduce livestock numbers. For millennia, people have led nomadic herding lifestyle in Orkhon Valley, however, the population increase and recent privatization of livestock after communism fell in 1990 led to a rapid increase in livestock numbers.

He has noticed that pasture is increasingly degraded due to overstocking, and has been encouraging the formation of herder groups to manage pasture use more sustainably. The water flow has also changed over the years, accelerated by climate change. We see this for ourselves on a visit to the famous Orkhon Waterfall, one of the usual highlights for visitors. The waterfall on our visit is noteworthy for not having any water. The governor explains that it is now dry for several months of the year – a new, disturbing trend, previously unseen by local herders.

As we leave Tumurkhuyag’s homely ger, say farewell to his wife, daughter and horses, thoughts run through my mind. The dry waterfall, the pasture deterioration, just seven rangers, only $65,000 a year, Genghis Khan and the neglected seat of his once mighty empire, the precarious state of its people, the beauty of the landscape, the wealth of biodiversity... “It is very timely that the SPAN project has started,” says Erdenebiley. “We will make tremendous progress in improving the financial situation and management of our world heritage park. It is our pride.”

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Project Facts - Strengthening of the Protected Area Network in Mongolia – SPAN 

• GEF project grant: U$ 1,363,630
• Co-financing: US$ 3,022,858
• Duration: 2010 - 2015

GEF financed SPAN Project, housed within the Protected Area Administration of MNET started in September 2010. With the objective of catalyzing the management effectiveness and financial sustainability of Mongolia’s protected area system, the project aims to, inter alia: 1) dramatically increase financing for protected area management; 2) improve protected area management capacity at national and site levels; and 3) demonstrate reduction of threats to biodiversity through collaborative management of the protected areas.

For more information, please contact: Oyuntulkhuur Bandi, Project Coordinator, oyuntulkhuur.bandi@undp.org or Onno van den Heuvel, Programme Manager for Biodiversity Conservation, UNDP Mongolia – onno.heuvel@undp.org

For information about the biodiversity work of the GEF and UNDP, please visit: www.thegef.org and www.undp.org/biodiversity
 

Text courtesy of UNDP