A ZOOLOGIST will be moving to Mongolia when she leads a new project to help conserve the country's wildlife.

Dr Kate Oddie flies out to the country's capital, Ulaan Baatar, in May to start work on the three-year initiative, which aims to give Mongolian students and national park rangers the skills they need for their environment.

The former Malvern Girls' College pupil is no stranger to the country having spent the last three years studying the species of birds that exist there.

But this time she will be working with her partner, Dr Nigel Barton, on the new project, which has been funded by the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

They hope to produce proper surveys on the wildlife, which includes critically endangered species such as cranes, snow leopards and wild Pallas cats.

Mongolia is three times the size of France but has a population of only 2.3m people and about a third of those people live in the capital.

"There are a few smaller towns but the rest is basically wilderness," said Dr Oddie, aged 28. "No one really knows what is there at the moment, so it is difficult to conserve it.

"In order to come up with plans to manage the environment, the numbers and distribution of these populations of birds and animals needs to be monitored.

"We will be helping to pass on the skills needed for university students and national park rangers to do this," she said.

On past visits to the country, which is one of the least densely populated countries in the world, she has lived in a felt tent, called a yurt, among nomadic herders in the desert.

But this time she will be largely based in Ulaan Baatar, although her work will take her out into the countryside. At the moment she is making the most of eating fruit and vegetables at her family home in Newtown, near Martley.

"Fruit and vegetables are non-existent in Mongolia," she said.

"Out there they eat a lot of dried milk products, rice and meat, mainly goats meat, but also camel."

Dr Oddie said one thing she cannot live without is Marmite and added that she would be stocking up before she flies out next month.