From March 9-12, 2008, snow leopard experts from all over the world came to Beijing, China to share their expertise and help formulate a range-wide snow leopard conservation action plan. The presentations covered a wide range of topics, and all were exceptional. Only two have been featured here, but for a complete list of topics addressed at the conference, see the Conference Announcement on the SLN News Page, or email heather@snowleopardnetwork.org.

The two projects featured here address very different aspects of genetic analysis in snow leopard scat.

Megan Parker, of the Working Dogs for Conservation Foundation, is working on a solution to the problems that Janecka and other snow leopard researchers often face. She is training dogs to identify snow leopard scats. Working Dogs for Conservation uses dogs’ acute sense of smell to do biological analysis that humans can only replicate by using costly, time-consuming, and complicated laboratory analysis. The dogs that work for this organization are not only able to detect many more scats in the field than human researchers would be able to find, but they are able to tell with 100% accuracy whether the scat in question belongs to the species being surveyed, a mistake that researchers often make.

In addition to identifying the species, the dogs have been able to distinguish between individuals within a species, therefore giving more accurate population estimates and reducing the cost of genetic analysis. They have not quite progressed this far when it comes to snow leopards, but they are currently being trained to do so using snow leopard scats donated by zoos. These dogs are not only helping human scientists, but doing a great service to their four-legged friends, the snow leopards.

Jan Janecka of Texas A&M University is using snow leopard scat in his research on the use of non-invasive genetics in the monitoring of snow leopard populations. He uses genetic analysis to determine the number of individual snow leopards present in a survey area as well as whether each is male or female. He then uses this information to determine how many snow leopards are represented in a population, as well as their distribution and whether certain individuals are permanent residents or simply passing through the area. By taking samples in the same area at different times, population trends can be identified. However, the problem of species misidentification limits the number of snow leopard scats collected by the researchers.