Dr Bakhtiyor Mardonov, a Range Ecology and Management specialist, obtained his PhD in 1993 (‘All-Russian Research Institute for Nature Protection’, Moscow). Since 1986, Bakhtiyor has been working on desert ecology, the impact of ungulates on desert vegetation, biodiversity, nature protection, diet and reproduction of rare species of desert ungulates and CO2 flux measurement. He has worked on international projects with ICARDA (Syria), CNRS (France), Global Livestock CRSP (USA) and has published about 30 scientific papers. He is a keen photographer and now Senior Research Range Ecologist with the Desert Ecology Department and Water Resources Research (Uzbek Academy of Sciences, Samarkand Division).