Lkhagvasumberel Tumursukh (Mongolian: Төмөрсүхийн Лхагвасүмбэрэл; 1988–2015) was a Mongolian biologist, conservation ranger and environmentalist. He fought against mining operations around the Tost-Tosonbumbi range to protect the environment and preserve the biodiversity. After multiple external attempts to take his life, T. Lkhagvasümberel mysteriously died in November 2015. Prominent international scientists, journalists, United Nations special rapporteur and activists, along with his father, expressed doubt about the cause of his death and urged the reinvestigation. The domestic and international public gained a general understanding of the need to protect the Tost-Tosonbumba range in Gurvan tes, Ömnögovi as a result of the case of his death.
Early life Lkhagvasumberel Tumursukh was born on 6 April 1988, in Ikh-Tamir, Arkhangai Province, the eldest son of J. Tumursukh. His father Tumursukh is a ranger and biologist in Ulaan Taiga, Khövsgöl. Lkhagvasumberel enrolled in an elementary school in Khatgal, Khövsgöl in 1996. He also took first place in the Biology Olympiad held in Khövsgöl Province in 2004, and third place in a wildlife photography competition held in 2009. In 2010, he graduated National University of Mongolia with a bachelor's degree in zoology.
Career Lkhagvasumberel Tumursukh joined the Snow Leopard Trust's Mongolia partner, Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation, in 2009 as a student intern in Ömnögovi Province, working on camera trapping for the Long-term Ecological Study (LTES) on snow leopards. He was hired full-time in 2012, becoming the primary Research Associate for the LTES program. His friends, colleagues and family called him Sumbe[e].
Conservation activity
Herders saw snow leopards as a threat to livestock and retaliated by killing them. Starting in the late 1990s, Mongolian environmentalists and scientists initiated a few projects to preserve the leopards. By 2009, the entire Tost Uul area in Gurvan tes, Ömnögovi had been opened to mining licenses, threatening to destroy the grasslands both livestock and snow leopard prey depended on. In October 2010, the Mineral Resources Authority approved a locally Protected Area status for Tost — the lowest protection tier. Mining companies got around this by reselling expiring licenses to each other. Therefore, Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation pushed for the stronger State Nature Reserve designation. Lkhagvasumberel Tumursukh once carried hundreds of pounds of ice up a mountain by hand to give animals water during a freeze. He also paid great attention to providing environmental education to local residents, and to reduce conflict between herders and snow leopards, he initiated a project — funded by international sources — to introduce predator-proof corrals to protect livestock from the predators. He also participated in an episode on snow leopards for the environmental and educational television series "Khureelen" ("The Ecosystem"), presenting his research work. He was featured in a Discovery Channel documentary.
Research works While working, Lkhagvasumberel enrolled in a master's program at the National University of Mongolia. As part of his research, he conducted Mongolia's first double-observer count surveys of Mongolian ibex, the primary prey of the snow leopard in the Tost Uul. This work resulted in him being lead author on a paper on prey abundance methodology, and he co-authored additional papers on snow leopard population dynamics and diet. Lkhagvasumberel was part of an international research team that made the first-ever discovery of a wild snow leopard den. Lkhagvasumberel traveled to India to strengthen his statistical and ecological skills, and in 2014 received a CREOi grant to train in the United States on wildlife handling and veterinary care practices for large mammals, aimed at building Mongolia's domestic capacity for snow leopard research and care. As a co-author, Lkhagvasumberel published several articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. He had a paper accepted for presentation at the Student Conference on Conservation Science and had secured an internship at United Kingdom zoos — indicating his research career was still actively expanding when he died in November 2015.
Murder Attempts Over the preceding two years prior to his death, Lkhagvasumberel had been subjected to at least three separate attacks by individuals opposed to his enforcement of protected area regulations at Tost Uul. In May 2014, four men grabbed Lkhagvasumberel, cutting his hands and neck seven or eight times in Ulaanbaatar when he was walking home from university. When he collapsed with bleeding, the attackers, thinking they had killed him, fled. Lkhagvasuren regained consciousness at dawn, made his way home, and received medical treatment. The case was initially treated as a robbery. He recovered by July 2014 and traveled to Seattle on a scholarship to continue his snow leopard studies. During the winter of 2014, Lkhagvasumberel was abducted by men in a black car, driven outside the city, and threatened with death, including threats against his three siblings if he didn't stay away from the area where he was protecting snow leopards. He reported it to the Mongolian Police Agency, who didn not take it seriously, concluded there was no criminal element to the case, and closed it. In April 2015, two men on motorcycles stabbed him three times while riding through a mountain pass in Ömnögovi Province; he was airlifted to a hospital. His stab wounds (4.5 cm, 2 cm, 3.5 cm deep) were later used by police to argue he had inflicted them himself.
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