Bayarmaa Chuluunbat is a wildlife ecologist and conservationist at the Wildlife Science and Conservation Center of Mongolia (WSCC), working across the Gobi–steppe to protect some of Central Asia’s most endangered species. Mongolia’s first National Geographic Young Explorer, she brings an interdisciplinary approach to wildlife conservation — combining camera trapping, GPS telemetry, dietary analysis, spatial monitoring, and conservation social science to investigate species ecology, movement, and the human dimensions of coexistence.

As Conservation Science Manager at WSCC, Bayarmaa leads the analytical work of the Sky Rangers Project — an innovative initiative that deploys GPS-tagged cinereous vultures, Mongolia’s largest raptor, as living sentinels across the landscape, extending the reach of conservation intelligence across Mongolia’s vast and thinly monitored terrain. Her research also spanned snow leopard population ecology in the Gobi’s Khurkh Mountain Range, saiga–livestock dietary interactions, and the socio-ecological impacts of railway expansion on khulan migration — work that has been published in journals including Mammalian Biology and Oryx, and presented at the University of Cambridge, National Geographic Headquarters, and the Convention on Migratory Species.

At the heart of Bayarmaa’s conservation philosophy is the belief that lasting protection must be rooted in the communities closest to the land. She grew up in Mankhan soum in Khovd Province — the core range of the critically endangered Mongolian saiga — and her connection to this species is both scientific and deeply personal. At age 12, she founded the Saiga Eco Club at her local high school, launching an anti-trap campaign that helped make Khovd Province the first in Mongolia to ban wildlife trap use supported by WWF Mongolia. That club is still active today, now led by the students she mentors. She is currently leading Echoes of the Mammoth Steppe, a National Geographic-funded youth conservation project in her hometown, engaging young people in saiga monitoring, climate storytelling, and community-based conservation across saiga range. In a landscape where mining expansion, climate-driven habitat loss, and illegal hunting are accelerating, this project is building the next generation of local guardians at precisely the moment the saiga needs them most.

Her work has been featured by BBC News, WWF Asia Pacific, BirdLife International, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. She has received grants and recognition from the National Geographic Society, Andrew Sabin Family Foundation, Wildlife Conservation Network, Saiga Conservation Alliance, and the Ministry of Education and Science of Mongolia.