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Sarantuya and Onon visit Colorado's Great Sand Dune National Park
Photo © TNC
Our Mongolian exchange participants visit a local folklife art festival during their stay.
Photo © TNC |
By Sarantuya and Onon
Colorado-Mongolia Exchange Participants
A Whirlwind Tour
Learning about grasslands conservation across eastern Colorado.
It is such a wonderful opportunity for us to participate in the Conservancy's exchange program and travel around the landscapes of eastern Colorado. The fascinating thing was that we felt like we were in our homeland because there are so many similarities between the two countries--the wildlife, nature and weather as well as the greatly hospitable personalities of all the local people we encountered along our way.
It was good experience to learn about conservation planning and projects as well as managing public and private land ownership, specifically how to build partnership among different stakeholders. We really appreciate the wonderful support of the Conservancy in Colorado that has enabled this program to succeed, and we’re looking forward to further cooperation.
Bios of Our Visitors
Sarantuya worked for the Mongolian Ministry of Nature and Environment as the Director of Strategic Planning and Management prior to establishing the Environmental Initiative Center (EIC), a nongovernmental organization working to influence national and local conservation policy. She participated in the Conservancy/Mongolia conservation capacity-building workshop earlier this year, and has been involved in preparing the National Program for Protected Areas in Mongolia, biodiversity action plans, and in drafting laws for wildlife conservation. She holds a Ph.D. in biology, is a liaison with the Mongolian government.
Onon works as a wildlife biologist for the World Wildlife Fund in Mongolia, primarily concerned with conservation of rare species including the snow leopard, the Mongolian saiga and the argali. She has considerable geographic information systems (GIS) experience with assessing human impact on rare species. She attended the Conservancy's ecoregional peer review in Turkey after working on the Altai ecoregional plan, and is most interested in learning about strategy implementation.
- Read press release.
What do Mongolia and Colorado share in common? Large swaths of grasslands and an innovative partnership designed to protect these rapidly disappearing lands. A hands-on exchange program will inform conservation practices on both continents by promoting the exchange of information and techniques for protecting these grassy landscapes.
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