TUV AIMAG, Mongolia — Through three decades of marriage, they have wandered across the hills of Mongolia’s Tuv Province, accompanied by their herd of sheep, and stalked by the wolves and snow leopards that threaten their livelihood. Five months ago, Chulunjav Bayarsaikhan and Tumurbaatar Davaasuren were joined by a new partner: Hasar, a shaggy, 11-month-old bankhar dog that a hundred years ago would have been a far more common sight outside the country’s tent homes.
“Now, nothing comes near our herd at night,” Tumurbaatar said. “If anything does, she barks in an alarming way, so we come out before it can attack.”
As years of overgrazing increasingly push Mongolian nomads into the territory of their oldest foes — snow leopards and wolves — a group of researchers and herders are trying to reinstate the use of the bankhar, a close relative of the Tibetan mastiff. The dog is native to Mongolia but nearly disappeared in the Soviet-era mass urbanization drives.
For thousands of years, the giant dogs roamed the Mongolian steppes with their nomadic masters, so much a part of the landscape that they featured in Chinese Qing Dynasty paintings of Mongolia and the 13th century travelogues of Marco Polo. Now experts are hoping to revive that legacy.
At the nonprofit Mongolia Bankhar Dog Project outside the capital, Ulaanbaatar, biologists and breeders say the bankhar could help conservationists convince herders that they need not aggressively trap and hunt endangered predator species. The center raises bankhar, which can grow as large as a small bear, and hands them over at 4 or 5 months old to herders, who must continue to train them under a regime to develop a bond with livestock rather than humans.
Hasar follows sheep day and night, and wards off but doesn’t attack predators that once decimated the couple’s herd. “I have high hopes for my dog as a herder, because she has learned a lot so far,” Chulunjav said.
Although the country of less than 3 million people is rapidly urbanizing, mostly around sprawling Ulaanbaatar, roughly a third of its residents have held on to a traditional nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle, so cattle or sheep losses can spell catastrophe for households.
Using dogs to protect herds also can help protect snow leopards as their population falls below 1,000, mostly in the Altai mountain range and in the south near the Gobi Desert, WWF Mongolia director Batbold Dorjgurkhem said.
“The habitat that is needed by snow leopards is shrinking due to increasing livestock numbers in Mongolia,” Batbold said. “Because of this, there is a conflict between herders and this top predator.”
Falling numbers of snow leopards are also unsettling Mongolia’s ecosystem, Batbold said. Among the snow leopard’s prey are marmots, whose numbers are proliferating as their chief predator’s population dips.
Greg Goodfellow of the Mongolian Bankhar Dog Project said larger herds and the demand for grazing land are keys behind shrinking snow leopard habitat. With fewer livestock lost to predation with the help of the dogs, the group hopes herders will reduce livestock numbers, easing the need to push further into leopard territory.
The dog project is seeking grants to set up breeding centers in Mongolia.
If trained correctly, the bankhar’s large size and intelligence makes it suitable for guarding livestock, said dog project caretaker Davaasuren Munkhsuld.
“Bankhars know how to act in difficult situations. They know how to take control,” said Davaasuren.
