Snow Leopard
Their fur is whitish to gray with black spots on head and neck, but larger rosettes on the back, flanks and bushy tail. The fur is thick with hairs between 5-12cm long. Its body is stocky, short-legged and slightly smaller than the other big cats. In relation to the length of its skull and width of its palate, it has large nasal openings, which allow for increasing the volume of air inhaled with each breath, and at the same time for warming and humidifying cold dry air. They show several adaptations for living in a cold, mountainous environment. Its small rounded ears help to minimize heat loss. Its broad paws well distribute the body weight for walking on snow, and have fur on their undersides to increase the grip on steep and unstable surfaces; it also helps to minimize heat loss.
Its long and flexible tail helps to maintain balance in the rocky terrain. The tail is also very thick due to fat storage, and is very thickly covered with fur, which allows the cat to use it like a blanket to protect its face when asleep. There are three subspecies; one in the Pamir mountain range countries, one in himalyas and Qinghai and one in Mongolia.
Habitat
They are distributed from the west of Lake Baikal through southern Siberia, in the Kunlun Mountains, in the Russian Altai mountains, Sayan and Tannu-Ola Mountains, in the Tian Shan, across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to the Hindu Kush in eastern Afghanistan, Karakoram in northern Pakistan, in the Pamir Mountains, and in the high altitudes of the Himalayas in India, Nepal, and Bhutan, and the Tibetan Plateau. In Mongolia, it is found in the Mongolian and Gobi Altai Mountains and the Khangai Mountains. In Tibet, it is found up to the Altyn-Tagh in the north.
Diet
They are carnivores and actively hunts its prey. It is an opportunistic hunter and also eats carrion. Its preferred wild prey species are Himalayan blue sheep,and wild goat. It also preys on domestic livestock. It prefers prey ranging in weight from 36-76 kg, but also hunts smaller mammals such as marmot, pika and vole species. The diet of the snow leopard varies across its range and with the time of year, and depends on prey availability. In the Himalayas, it preys mostly on Himalayan blue sheep and Siberian ibex. In the Karakoram, Tian Shan, Altai and Mongolia's Tost Mountains, its main prey consists of Siberian ibex, Thorold's deer and Siberian roe deer. Other species hunted when available include red panda, wild boar, langur monkey, snow cock and chukar partridge.
Breeding
They become sexually mature at two to three years, and normally live for 15–18 years in the wild. In captivity they can live for up to 25 years. Oestrus typically lasts from five to eight days, and males tend not to seek out another partner after mating, probably because the short mating season does not allow sufficient time. Paired snow leopards mate in the usual felid posture, from 12-36 times a day. They are unusual among large cats in that they have a well-defined birth peak. They usually mate in late winter, marked by a noticeable increase in marking and calling. Females have a gestation period of 90–100 days, so the cubs are born between April and June. The mother gives birth in a rocky den or crevice lined with fur shed from her underside. Litter sizes vary from one to five cubs, but the average is 2.2. The cubs are blind and helpless at birth, although already with a thick coat of fur. Their eyes open at around seven days, and the cubs can walk at five weeks and are fully weaned by 10 weeks. Also when they are born, they have full black spots which turn into rosettes as they grow to adolescence. The cubs leave the den when they are around two to four months of age, but remain with their mother until they become independent after around 18–22 months. Once independent, they disperse over considerable distances, even crossing wide expanses of flat terrain to seek out new hunting grounds. This likely helps reduce the inbreeding that would otherwise be common in their relatively isolated environments.
Population
They are classed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, they were last assesed on the 8th of november 2016 and at that time there was around 2,700-3,300 mature individuals and the population trend is decreasing. Until recently, most studies were conducted over rather small areas, sometimes smaller than the home range of a single Snow Leopard, rendering the information inadequate to make population and density inferences over larger areas.
Threats
The main ongoing threats fall into three broad areas: 1) competition with livestock, habitat degradation and declines in prey; 2) depredation by Snow Leopards on livestock and retaliatory killing; 3) illegal trade in furs, bones and other body parts. Recently it was found that over 90% of annual Snow Leopard poaching is estimated to occur in five range countries: China(103-236 animals poached per year), Mongolia(34-53), Pakistan(23-53), India(21-45) and Tajikistan(20-25). While the highest levels of poaching and illegal trade are in China, which has the largest share of Snow Leopard range, countries with smaller shares of global range were flagged for having disproportionately high levels of estimated poaching(Nepal and Pakistan) and illegal Snow Leopard trade (Afghanistan and Russia). Afghanistan, Bhutan and Kazakhstan had markedly low levels of seizures compared to observations of poaching and illegal trade, suggesting the need for strengthened law enforcement in these countries.
Conservation
Very significant investments in conservation have been made. These include the establishment of new protected areas within the Snow Leopard range; anti-poaching measures; training and capacity-building; initiatives to reduce conflict with herders (e.g. strengthening livestock corrals, vaccination, handicrafts and alternative livelihoods, grazing set-asides), community engagement programmes; illegalization and confiscation of firearms across China, and education programmes to raise awareness of the Snow Leopard and its habitat (see Conservation Measures section for more details and examples). The Range-wide Priority Setting workshop in Beijing in 2008, the Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program and the revised version of the Snow Leopard Survival Strategy have all enhanced the global strategic framework for conservation of the species.
Illegal poaching, the main threat to Russia's Snow Leopard population, was recently alleviated, at least in several important areas, by concerted removal of wire-snares and the recruitment of former poachers as protected area rangers (Paltsyn et al. 2016). Anti-poaching efforts in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have also been strengthened, thus addressing the main underlying threat that led to the drastic decline in numbers in several Central Asia states following the break-up of the Soviet Union 25 years ago.
A number of transboundary projects provide important conservation benefits to Snow Leopards across their range (Rosen and Zahler 2016). Two transboundary or landscape-level projects are currently operating in Central Asia (Mallon and Kulikov 2015): The Khan Tengri nature conservation park (3,257 km²) has been designated in eastern Kyrgyzstan that will link Naryn Reserve, Sarychat Ertash Reserve, and two others in Kyrgyzstan with Tomur Nature Reserve in China; a transboundary project is currently operating in the northern Tien Shan (Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan) with Snow Leopard as a focal species and with the aim of developing cooperation and enhancing protected areas. The UNDP/GEF Altai-Sayan Project (2007-2012) also identified the Snow Leopard as one of its focal species and carried out a series of transboundary projects including camera trapping, and training (WWF 2012).
Many incentive programs have been initiated (reviewed in Mishra et al. 2003 and see chapters in McCarthy and Mallon 2016). One oft-cited threat is the killing of Snow Leopards by herders in retaliation for predation on livestock, exacerbated by occasions when many sheep or goats are killed in a single attack by a Snow Leopard gaining entry to poorly constructed or maintained night-time corrals. Remedial measures have involved strengthening corrals to make them predator-proof. To date, over 260 corrals have been strengthened in Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Tajikistan with the result that no subsequent livestock predation occurred (Mohammad et al. 2016, Moheb and Paley 2016). A similar programme in Western Tyva, Russia protected corrals in 46 herder camps, and since 2008 no predation occurred in any of them and annual losses of livestock fell by 50-60% (Paltsyn et al. 2016).
Innovative community programmes have been established in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with new governance structures created (over 65 in Pakistan) aimed at local natural resource management, and with over 50 rangers in the Afghan Wakhan and over 100 rangers in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan monitoring wildlife and enforcing local and national regulations against poaching and other resource extraction activities (Zahler and Paley 2016). A programme has been pioneered by the Snow Leopard Trust in Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan to increase local incomes by providing training in the manufacture of handicrafts and access for the finished products to international markets in return for a commitment to prevent poaching of Snow Leopards and their prey and to engage in environmental education and other activities. These programmes have proved successful and have had additional benefits (Bayarjargal et al. 2016). In Kyrgyzstan, no Snow Leopards or prey were poached during 2014 in any of the partner communities (www.snowleopard.org 3 June 2015). Incentives related to ecotourism have led to a surge in Snow Leopard sightings in Hemis National Park, Ladakh (India), attributed to a combination of corral predator-proofing and meaningful income generation associated with community-managed homestays first initiated in 2007 (Jackson and Wangchuk 2004, Wangchuk et al. 2010, Jackson 2015, Namgail and Dadul 2016). With these local communities now perceiving Snow Leopards positively instead of pests to be killed or chased away, this notoriously elusive big cat is now being regularly observed from distances as close as 50-200 meters, especially during its mating season in winter.
In addition to these programmes, other conservation initiatives include grazing set-asides (village reserves; Mishra et al. 2016), livestock vaccination (Nawaz et al. 2016), livestock insurance (Kunkel et al. 2016) and a range of education and awareness projects (Hillard et al. 2016). Conservation initiatives that blend conservation science with traditional knowledge, and which mitigate Snow Leopard-related human-wildlife conflict, improve household incomes for households dependent upon livestock, and that highlight the cultural and ecological importance of Snow Leopards are also most likely to be embraced by local people who likely represent the effective and cost-efficient stewards for this felid's remote mountain landscapes (Jackson and Brewer-Lama 2016).