Forest protection starts with picking up a lynx girl

Chapter 528: A lone leopard kills a pack of wolves. This is not a boast. It can brag about it for the rest of its life.
Seeing his own two-legged beast, little Altai pounced over and pressed the skinny Alexei to the ground and rubbed him.

The people around looked as if they were used to it and took out their cell phones to take several photos. Klas also secretly took two photos.

After hanging out for a while, Alexei invited them to stay at his small farm for two days, and also wanted to ask Chen Ying for a favor.

"I asked someone about Chen's situation. I hope I didn't offend you." Alexi said directly to Chen Ying that he had gone to find out about him, and then told him about his request for help.

"I heard that you have a deep understanding of snow leopards. We happen to have a snow leopard here that has been behaving a little abnormally recently. I wonder if I can ask Chen to help take a look at it."

They are all zoologists and wilderness survival experts, but their knowledge of veterinary medicine is definitely not as good as that of professionals.

"It was a female leopard. The cubs were separated from her last year. We thought she would give birth to a new litter of snow leopard cubs this year, but later we found that she showed no signs of estrus."

Alexei's friend drove in front to lead the way, and he got into Chen Ying's car and took the opportunity to introduce the situation of the snow leopard along the way.

"Last week I received news from nearby herders that the snow leopard broke into their farm, killed three lambs but did not eat them. Instead, it dragged one away and hung it on a tree."

Klas was driving. Chen Ying took Alexei's phone and took a look. There were several consecutive photos of the female snow leopard and the three lambs it had killed. There was also a photo of the snow leopard dragging the lamb away and hanging it on a branch attached to the rock.

It is not yet the peak period for snow leopards to give birth, so it is not certain whether this female snow leopard is really not looking for a mate.

However, snow leopards generally do not do anything dangerous during pregnancy. They will try their best to catch enough food and eat themselves fat to cope with the difficult period of raising cubs and breastfeeding.

Chen Ying thought about it for a while and felt that the mother leopard's behavior did not seem to be without purpose, but rather seemed to be luring other animals over.

Alexei didn't know either, after all, he hadn't found the leopard yet.

"We encountered the brown bear this time when we were on our way to find the female leopard. We had to walk a long way from the small farm to the middle of the mountain ridge to reach the female leopard's territory."

Part of the middle section is also within our country, so Chen Ying simply asked someone about the situation in that area.

"Brother Ying, Boss, I know this place."

Unexpectedly, Ji Xin was the first one to reply to his private message.

"Brother Ying, I stayed here for two months before. I wanted to take some photos, but then I encountered a pack of wolves and had to escape with all my might. But there are a lot of animals there, including snow leopards and cubs. When I left at the end of last year, the newly-adult snow leopard seemed to have been surrounded and killed by wolves. I was in a hurry to escape at that time and didn't dare to stay for too long."

Along with the private message, there were also two blurry photos.

(Do you feel like this is a wolf in snow leopard skin?)

Chen Ying’s first thought when he saw the photo was, could this young snow leopard be the son of the female leopard?
He had just left home and hadn't had a chance to venture into the world when he was killed by a wolf. Even though he was a female leopard, he would have gone crazy.

If this was what he guessed, then the mother leopard's behavior could be explained. She must have wanted to lure the wolves over and use humans to avenge her son.

Chen Ying didn't know whether her guess was right or not, so she told Alexei carefully. The other party remained silent until they arrived at the small farm.

The farm is really not big and doesn't raise many livestock.

"The original farmer here got old and was taken away by his children, so I took over this place. We got rid of all the cows and horses we had raised before, leaving only more than 20 sheep."

Since he was not an agricultural professional, Alexei hired a father and son to manage the farm for him.

A three-story wooden building stands in the snow ahead, in typical Kazakh style.

"Originally, herders were used to living in tents, but they also had fixed houses. I renovated and rebuilt this wooden house after I took over. The three old wooden houses next to it were left by the original owner of the farm. The father and son who helped me manage the farm lived in two of them, and the remaining one was used as a warehouse."

After entering the house, the warmth of the fireplace drove away the chill brought by the mountain wind. There was a large plate of scones and a pot of hot soup on the stove on the table.

The food was prepared by the father and son. They were notified in advance and prepared to entertain the guests, and were already busy on the farm.

Little Altai and Meidi did not go into the house. They went to Little Altai's shack.

Alexei took the photo to several friends and asked them about it, and he actually got some information out of them.

"We also border Russia. We just got the news that last winter, Russian conservationists rescued a dying snow leopard in the Altai Mountains."

This is the only news at the moment, and no one can be sure whether it is the poor snow leopard boy.

After all, the Altai Mountains are so big, there are more than one snow leopard, and wolves come in groups. If the mother leopard mistakes their relatives, she will scratch their faces.

It took five or six hours to walk from Horgos to the small farm, and another seven or eight hours to reach the border between the Altai Mountains and Russia.

Of course, this is the distance that humans travel. For wild animals, a few hundred kilometers is just a blink of an eye. ┓(`)┏, after all, they can take shortcuts.

Alexei was left to investigate the matter of the young snow leopard. Chen Ying and Klas took this opportunity to follow little Altai for a walk in the forest, during which they encountered a female lynx.

Unfortunately, little Altai was still a young boy. When facing the beautiful female lynx, he actually opened his mouth and made a sound to drive it away.

The other party took one look at it, turned around and left without any hesitation.

I don’t know if it’s a psychological effect, but the animals in the intersection areas all look the same, but Chen Ying feels that these dual-nationality animals are not as good-looking as her own pure furry ones.

Little Altai is an exception. This familiar beast has a kind of beauty as if it is missing a brain stem, which makes people subconsciously put a filter on it.

Little Altai took Medi and led the two bipeds to the ridge. The snow had not melted yet, but fat squirrels were already coming out to visit.

Maybe it was a little sick of eating too many squirrel strips some time ago, or maybe this is little Altai's hometown, and it gets along well with these little red-haired elves. Anyway, it has been more than an hour since the little squirrel appeared, and the two big cats have no intention of attacking them.

In a slightly flatter rocky area, Chen Ying found a place to sit down, while Klaus played with the two big cats.

"Squeak, do you want to eat one?"

Chen Ying tilted his head and saw a fat, red-haired squirrel standing on a branch above his left shoulder. It was holding an unknown dried fruit in its paws and tentatively extending its claws towards him.

"Thank you, I don't want any."

The little squirrel squeaked again and ran back and forth in the tree several times.

"Squeak, are you here to look for the injured guy?"

"Injured? Who's injured?"

Chen Ying raised her eyebrows curiously and asked, taking out a handful of pistachios from her pocket.

When the little squirrel saw the pistachios, it dropped the dried fruits it was holding and threw them down, then jumped to Chen Ying's side.

"Can I have some of this?"

Of course Chen Ying was happy to do so, after all, she took it out to feed squirrels or other birds.

Holding a plump pistachio kernel, the little squirrel took a bite. It tasted a bit strange, but it was edible. "Squeak, you're quite nice. The biped I followed before was just like you. He would feed me, but I haven't seen him for a long time."

Chen Ying was slightly stunned. Could it be that this squirrel was raised by the previous owner of the small farm? Is it such a coincidence?

The lifespan of a squirrel is generally six to eight years, but the lifespan of a squirrel in the wild is relatively shorter.

This squirrel looks to be in its prime and should be able to live for another three or four years, so it is not impossible that it was raised from a young age by the previous farm owner.

After chatting casually with the little squirrel for a while, the little guy jumped directly onto Chen Ying.

"Squeak, I'll take you to see the injured big guy."

This little thing is quite gossipy and has been urging Chen Ying to go watch the fun with it.

Chen Ying did not refuse. After all, he was curious about what kind of animal was injured and why the little squirrel was so concerned about it that he wanted to watch the fun.

After calling out to Klaus, he came to a hillside under the guidance of the little squirrel lying on his shoulder.

When approaching the hillside, Chen Ying discovered something was wrong. There were animal carcasses here. Although they had been eaten and only remnants were left, it was still possible to tell from the bones that they were the carcasses of canines.

Could the injured animal the little squirrel was talking about be a wolf?
Chen Ying hesitated whether to continue moving forward. If it was a lone wolf, it would be easy to deal with, but if there were more than two, it would be very troublesome for him to deal with.

What if it’s a three-headed wolf… I’ll definitely deliver the takeaway to your door.

Hesitantly, he walked forward for a distance and this time saw three corpses in the forest, all wolves.

"Oh my god, who robbed the wolf's den?" Klaus, who followed behind, also saw this scene. He squatted down and carefully dug up the wolf's corpse with a branch, trying to determine from the wound what animal did it.

Chen Ying frowned and stepped over the wolf's corpse and walked forward.

About twenty meters later, an abandoned wolf cave appeared in front of us. Sure enough, there were the remains of wolf cubs at the entrance of the cave.

Basically he understood who did it.

"Is it a snow leopard?" Klaus also came to the conclusion, but he was curious because he had almost never heard of snow leopards killing wolf cubs. Usually, shouldn't it be lynxes that kill wolves?

Speak of lynx, here comes lynx.

Little Altai followed the temperature to find his way here, cried out twice, walked back and forth at the entrance of the cave carefully sniffing, and finally trotted off to the other side.

Medi followed behind it, her fur covered with many pieces of dead branches and leaves, and there were also grass stems mixed in with her beautiful fur.

After a while, Maddie's sharp cry was heard, "Meow, meow, meow!"

"Meow, come here quickly, Twolegs, there's a cat dying here!"

Chen Ying ran over and saw that little Altai had already run into the ravine, while Meidi was still standing on a rock by the ravine, shouting for help.

When little Altai reached the bottom of the ditch, he did not rush to approach the big cat. Instead, he stood about four or five meters away, carefully looking at the big guy that had fallen to the ground.

While Chen Ying was still sticking her head out, a little squirrel that had gone out for a walk and came back was standing on a branch diagonally above her and squeaking.

"It's this big guy, that's it, is it going to die?"

"I don't know, how about you go down and help take a look?"

I exchanged a few words with the squirrel in a low voice. This little creature, although small in size, was very brave and actually ran down to take a look.

"Squeak, it's still alive, but it's dying soon."

The little squirrel was even bold enough to sneak up to the big cat's nose and walk around it, not afraid of being caught and eaten by the big cat.

(Let me see if you are still alive)
Chen Ying had already recognized that the person lying below was a snow leopard, but the location where the snow leopard had fallen was a bit troublesome.

Alexei's small farm was originally close to the border, otherwise little Altai would not have lost his way and entered China.

The problem is that this border seems to be the junction of three countries, and he is not very clear which specific point is the national boundary.

Perhaps because the two of them stayed here too long, they were discovered by surveillance and border guards. A drone appeared diagonally in front of them and spoke to them.

When Chen Ying saw the red five-pointed star paint on the drone, he breathed a sigh of relief and waved towards the drone.

Through the drone conversation, Chen Ying indicated to the person operating the drone that there were injured wild animals below, the situation was very critical and assistance was needed.

After a while, a team of patrolmen trotted over and started talking across the ravine.

"Did you hurt the animals down there?"

"How is that possible!" Chen Ying quickly denied it and showed her veterinary certificate and work certificate on her mobile phone.

"We were invited to participate in a project collaboration. Today, I went out with my companions to check the surrounding environment. We accidentally found a lot of wolf carcasses in front of us. We followed them and found a snow leopard underneath. We couldn't tell whether it was still alive or not."

It is not convenient for the Chinese side to operate drones into the Kazakh side to inspect the forest conditions, but it is possible to enter the valleys in the border area.

While Chen Ying was describing the situation, the other party had already verified his identity and operated a drone into the ravine to take photos.

The drone on the Chinese side was equipped with an infrared temperature imaging system, which confirmed that the snow leopard was still alive, but its condition might not be good.

Chen Ying said that she was a veterinarian at the emergency station and had some veterinary first aid medicines and equipment with her. She needed their help to go into the ravine to check on the condition of the snow leopard.

Klas stayed up there, and the Chinese team on the opposite side also left two people in the ravine to contact the rescue unit, while the other two went down into the ravine with Chen Ying to see if they could provide rescue for the snow leopard.

The wounds on the snow leopard's body were so deep that the bones were visible, and two of them had already begun to fester.

There was a wolf carcass under the snow leopard's body, and the wolf's claws were firmly pierced into the snow leopard's right abdomen. But part of the wolf's meat probably went into the snow leopard's stomach.

The result was a lose-lose situation, with the wolves suffering more.

After checking the dying snow leopard's condition, Chen Ying said that the snow leopard must be sent to the rescue center for treatment immediately. If they came a day later, they would probably only be able to collect the snow leopard's body.

"Captain, we may need to inform Harbin about the location here."

Anything involving border areas is not easy, but fortunately the wildlife agencies of the three countries often cooperate and have branches in the local area.

Soon, the news that a seriously injured snow leopard was found in the ravine was reported to the ecological protection departments of the three countries. After brief negotiations, the three parties launched a joint rescue operation.

A cross-border snow leopard rescue operation was quickly launched, with medical equipment provided by the Russian Snow Leopard Survey Organization stationed nearby, rescue equipment provided by China, and a temporary operating room provided by Kazakhstan.

(End of this chapter)