Snow leopard is a felid, highly adapted to the cold and rugged mountain
ecosystem where it lives. Distributed across the mountains of 12 countries in Central
Asia, approximately 4,000-7,000 snow leopards are surviving today and their
population is believed to be declining. Due to the difficult terrain that it inhabits, it has
been little studied and basic ecological and biological information about the species is
still unavailable. Various on-going research projects using satellite telemetry, digital
camera trapping, genetic data analyses and other state of the art methods are continuing
to help us understand the ecology of snow leopards better. Snow leopards are solitary,
though social interactions between males and females occur occasionally. Cubs follow
their mothers for about a year before weaning away. Snow leopards have large home
ranges, of the order of several hundred square kilometres. They primarily prey upon
ibex and bharal, though feed upon a large variety of other mountain mammals and birds
including domestic livestock. Snow leopards primarily communicate through scent
though vocalization can often be heard around the known season of mating. Found in
extremely low density, their populations are threatened by increasing threats of mining,
poaching and retaliatory killing by local herders. Various successful conservation
models exist and are being implemented with variable success rate across the snow
leopard distribution range. Given the extent of interface with humans, community based
conservation aimed at benefitting communities and wildlife alike have been found to be
most successful in case of the snow leopard.
Keywords: Snow leopard, felid, mountains, central Asia, endangered, ibex,
bharal, mining, retaliatory killing, elusive, camouflage, poaching, community
based conservation, conflict, telemetry, camera-trapping, Panthera, vocal chords,
diet, wolf.
