SLN is delighted to invite you to this exciting initiative with Integrative Conservation in a webinar series.
About Integrative Conservation:
Integrative Conservation is an interdisciplinary journal encompassing a wide range of perspectives and scholarly disciplines relevant for our understanding and conservation of biodiversity. Published by Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Graden (XTBG) in partnership with Wiley, the journal publishes paper with clear relevance for the theory, practice, or policy of biodiversity conservation. With a global scope, Integrative Conservation welcomes research spanning all taxa, levels of biological organization, biomes, and biogeographical regions.
Special Issue: Snow Leopard – A Large Cat with High Potential for Conservation Success
The Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia), a unique yet vulnerable flagship species, inhabits some of the most remote and challenging terrains of High Asia. Although down-listed to “vulnerable” by IUCN in 2017, it remains a conservation concern as the region of High Asia is facing threats from climate change, growing infrastructure, urbanisation and increasing livestock grazing. Amid a twenty-fold increase in published studies on the species since the early 2000s, this special issue assembles pioneering research addressing three critical and interconnected challenges:
- Establishing baselines
- Advancing methods
- Transboundary conservation
About our Speakers (Authors):
Theme 1: Establishing Baseline
Presenter 1: Ms. Charu Sharma
Affiliations: Research Assistant, Nature Conservation Foundation
Title of Presentation: A new dawn? Population baselines of snow leopards and other mammals of the Kishtwar High Altitude National Park, India
Charu Sharma is an early-career researcher with the High Altitudes Program at the Nature Conservation Foundation, India. Her work involves using camera traps and refining methodologies to study wildlife in mountain ecosystems, alongside monitoring snow leopard populations across large spatial scales. Her research interests include the population dynamics of mountain ungulates, spatial ecology, and evidence-based conservation. She aspires to pursue further research on the impacts of human activities on mountain ungulates and steppe ecosystems, with the goal of bridging scientific inquiry and collaborative, community-driven conservation efforts.
Theme 2: Advancing Methods
Presenter: Dr. Cheng Chen
Affiliations: Program Director, Nature Watch Program, Shan Shui Conservation Center
Title of Presentation: Next-Generation Sequencing of Fecal DNA: A Novel Insight Into the Mitogenome Phylogeography of the Snow Leopard (Panthera Uncia)
Dr. Cheng Chen’s main focus is about wildlife conservation and biodiversity mainstreaming. She is in charge of the China Nature Watch Program of Shan Shui Conservation Center since 2019, focusing on and dedicated to promoting the mainstreaming of biodiversity conservation in planning, investment, environmental assessment, and corporate behavior through multiple perspectives including biodiversity database, technological empowerment, scientific research, and policy advocacy, to protect biodiversity sensitive areas from economic development. She has a background of wildlife conservation biology, and has been engaged in the conservation of snub-nosed monkeys and snow leopards since 2008, working on the molecular ecology of Sichuan snub-nosed monkeys, as well as the landscape conservation of snow leopards and wildlife genetics monitoring in the Sanjiangyuan Region. She has been deeply involved in and coordinated the promotion of the development of China’s Snow Leopard Conservation Network since 2015.
About our Facilitator:
Dr Lingyun Xiao, Assistant Professor, Department of Health and Environmental Sciences, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.
Dr Lingyun Xiao is a member of the IUCN Caprinae Specialist Group, Snow Leopard Network Steering Committee (2021-2023), and the China regional leader for the 2025 IUCN Red List snow leopard assessment. Her research focuses on interspecies relationships within snow leopard ecosystems, drivers of community dynamics, coexistence of pastoralism and wildlife conservation, interplay between legal and illegal wildlife trade, and conservation policy evaluation, aiming to support in-situ protection. She earned her Ph.D. in Zoology from Peking University. In the last five years, she published 21 papers in journals like Current Biology, Biological Conservation and Methods in Ecology and Evolution, and served as a reviewer for top-tier ecology and conservation journals. She is associate editor of Snow Leopard Report, and has received honors including the Conservation Leadership Programme Future Conservationist award, and the National Geographic Explorer Award. Her currently supervised doctoral projects receive funding from the National Natural Science Foundation Youth Fund and the Amity Foundation, with her work featured by Mongabay, The Conversation, Six Tone, Xinhua News Agency, and Forestry and Grassland News.
Date/Time:
Tuesday, April 7th at 15:00 PM (Bishkek time)
Location:
ZOOM, to join this talk, REGISTER HERE
Please note:
- If you have never used Zoom before, we recommend that you try the link 10 minutes before the start of the lecture.
- Please feel free to write questions in the comment area and there will be time for questions/discussion at the end of the talk.
- Please note that the session will be recorded and later featured on the SLN website. If you have concerns about this please let us know before the session