The Gansu team members of the Wildlife Institute at Beijing Forestry University (WI-BFU) have recently returned after a very successful field season in Qilianshan National Nature Reserve (Qilianshan NNR), located in China’s Gansu Province. In early January 2013 Justine Alexander, leading the fieldwork for this season, set out with WuQian, her invaluable assistant and translator for the first 4 weeks, in order to meet the rest of the field team, A Cheng and Mr. Wang from the Qilianshan NNR, and to start the long 3.5 months of field work. The main objective of this fieldwork was to examine how snow leopards (Panthera uncia) are distributed in relation to other species and what mechanisms mediate their co-existence, a crucial start to Justine’s PhD research. In this field season data was gathered using a combination of different non-invasive approaches including carnivore scat collection, sign transect monitoring and camera trapping. Despite the extreme cold conditions during the winter months the team was able to successfully survey an area of 480 km2 and set up a total of 62 camera trap stations. In mid-March the field team was joined by Joelene Hughes, from Oxford University, and Pan Guoliang, as her hard-working assistant, who carried out surveys for blue sheep (Pseudois nayaur) and other ungulates in the area in order to assess the prey base for the local carnivores. These projects will provide fundamental research into snow leopard and blue sheep distribution and population ecology in the extreme northeastern part of their range in China. The fieldwork builds on the continuing work on snow leopard biology and conservation by Beijing Forestry University’s Wildlife Institute, with support from Qilanshan NNR, the State Forestry Administration, and in collaboration with University of Oxford, supported by the Starr Foundation and the Robertson Foundation.