This Session introduces the SMART ecological records plug in for designing surveys, collecting data using handheld devices, and managing data for export to statistical programs (e.g. DISTANCE)
Please find details below, to a new article added to the Bibliography:
Title: Understanding People’s Relationship With Wildlife in Trans-Himalayan Folklore.
Authors: Bhatia, S., Suryawanshi, K., Redpath, S., Namgail, S., Mishra, C.
Abstract: People’s views and values for wild animals are often a result of their experiences and traditional knowledge. Local folklore represents a resource that can enable an understanding of the nature of human-wildlife interactions, especially the underlying cultural values. Using archival searches and semi-structured interviews, we collected narratives about the ibex (Capra sibirica) (n = 69), and its predators, the wolf (Canis lupus) (n = 52) and the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) (n = 43), in Ladakh, India. We compared these stories to those of a mythical carnivore called seng ge or snow lion (n = 19), frequently referenced in local Tibetan Buddhist folklore and believed to share many of the traits commonly associated with snow leopards (except for livestock depredation). We then categorized the values along social-cultural, ecological and psychological dimensions. We found that the ibex was predominantly associated with utilitarianism and positive symbolism. Both snow leopard and wolf narratives referenced negative affective and negative symbolic values, though more frequently in the case of wolves. Snow leopard narratives largely focused on utilitarian and ecologistic values. In contrast, snow lion narratives were mostly associated with positive symbolism. Our results suggest that especially for snow leopards and wolves, any potentially positive symbolic associations appeared to be overwhelmed by negative sentiments because of their tendency to prey on livestock, unlike in the case of the snow lion. Since these values reflect people’s real and multifarious interactions with wildlife, we recommend paying greater attention to understanding the overlaps between natural and cultural heritage conservation to facilitate human-wildlife coexistence.
URL:https://snowleopardnetwork.org/bibliography/Bhatia_et_al_2021_Folklore_and_values.pdf
Snow Leopard Network рада представить своего партнера – Общество сохранения диких животных (WCS) – и предложить вашему вниманию данный семинар, первый на русском языке. Модуль 9 знакомит участников с инструментами для мониторинга популяций диких животных и потенциальных угроз в местах обитания ирбиса. Присоединяйтесь к нам!
Программа SMART (Инструмент пространственного мониторинга и отчетности) быстро стала мировым стандартом в управлении и мониторинге охраны территорий. В настоящее время программа SMART используется на более чем 900 охраняемых территориях в 60 странах по всему миру. Однако в ареале ирбиса данная программа пока применяется ограниченно. Программа SMART использует данные патрулирования в циклах управления, цель которых – поэтапное повышение эффективности рейдов. Программа может помочь в решении проблем, связанных с угрозами ирбису, его видам-жертвам и местообитаниям, а также обеспечить его сохранение.
Основная цель данного семинара – подробно рассказать о том, как работает программа SMART в контексте адаптивного управления в ареале ирбиса. Основное внимание будет уделено процессу реализации программы на местах (тренинги, встречи, логистика и техническая поддержка).
Михил Хётте из российской программы Общества сохранения диких животных (WCS) будет вести семинар на русском языке и у вас будет время для обсуждений и вопросов.
Михил Хётте
Михил имеет степень магистра в экономике и управлении бизнесом, которую он получил в университете Амстердама. Он работал в Голландии в качестве консультанта по вопросам управления в компаниях KMPG и Deloitte & Touche. С 1996 г. он принимает участие в природоохранных проектах на Дальнем Востоке России, с 1997 г. является директором Tigris Foundation (голландская НКО, созданная Михилом в целях сохранения дальневосточного леопарда и амурского тигра), в 2003-2008 гг. – сотрудник Лондонского зоологического общества. С 2006 г. в рамках российской программы Общества сохранения диких животных (WCS) занимается разработкой и внедрением программы SMART (ранее – MIST) для мониторинга и адаптивного управления рейдами. Специалисты WCS оказали содействие во внедрении программы SMART на 7 федеральных ООПТ в ареале амурского тигра и одном управлении охотнадзора на Дальнем Востоке России.
С 2016 г. Михил также работает над проектами SMART в Центральной Азии. Он помогал разрабатывать и внедрять SMART для проведения патрулирования под руководством WCS в ООПТ, созданной для охраны ирбиса в районе Вахан в Афганистане. В 2018 г. Михил провел 5-дневный семинар, посвященный знакомству с программой SMART, для Казахстанской ассоциации сохранения биоразнообразия и других ООПТ и природоохранных организаций. В том же году Михил вместе с Тони Линамом провел 3-дневный ознакомительный семинар по программе SMART в Бишкеке для специалистов из Киргизии, Узбекистана и Монголии. С 2019 г. он оказывает содействие Программе развития ООН и ее партнерам в Узбекистане во внедрении программы SMART на двух пилотных территориях в ареале ирбиса – Чаткальском и Гиссарском заповедниках. Если будет получено финансирование, в этом году Михил начнет свою работу над пилотным проектом по внедрению программы SMART в двух заповедниках в Киргизии, где обитает ирбис.
Hello All,
I am happy to announce that with the continued generous support of the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation, Panthera will be accepting letters of interest from February 15th through March 15th, for our Sabin Snow Leopard grants program.
This will be our 7th year of the grant program and the accomplishments of grantees from the past 6 years have been tremendous and inspiring. I can offer that the common thread among successful applicants has been their innovative approach to creating new tools, addressing old questions from new perspectives, and/or filling significant knowledge gaps.
Please see the attached, or follow the link below, for details.
https://www.panthera.org/cms/sites/default/files/Panthera_SabinSnowLeopardGrantProgram.pdf
All the best,
-Byron Weckworth
Byron Weckworth | Director, Snow Leopard Program; Director, Conservation Genetics
Visit us online at www.panthera.org
We are happy to welcome you to our first SLN Webinar for 2021. In 2020 we launched the Webinar series with updates from the range and new directions in snow leopard research and conservation. In 2021 we continue to welcome organisations working on different aspects of snow leopard conservation and individuals at different stages of their career. We also would like to widen the scope of the webinars to feature the diversity of contributors to snow leopard conservation, including community members, young researchers and policy makers. In this first webinar we will travel to the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau with a young team of researchers who are looking at snow leopard conservation from a wider perspective- and considering other large mammals.
We are pleased to welcome Charlotte Hacker and Dr. Yunchuan Dai who will discuss Tibetan brown bear and snow leopard research and conservation in China. Our speakers will give a particular focus to how these carnivores co-exist with humans and varying land use patterns- highlight key conservation messages and learnings.
Charlotte Hacker is a PhD candidate at Duquesne University and research associate with the Snow Leopard Conservancy. Her work surrounds the use of noninvasive genetic approaches to better understand the population status, genetic structure, and diet of predators, with a focus on snow leopards. Her research aims to build upon current knowledge of snow leopard ecology, taxonomy, and coexistence with humans.
Yunchuan Dai PhD, graduated from the Chinese Academy of Forestry. Currently, he is working as an Associate Research Scientist at the Institute for Ecology and Environmental Resources, Chongqing Academy of Social Sciences. His work surrounds the use of social interviews, ecological modeling and genetic approaches to better understand negative human-wildlife interactions, with a focus on Tibetan brown bears in the Sanjiangyuan region. His research aims to explore the drivers of human-bear conflicts and to propose mitigation measures and protection countermeasures based on the probable drivers and spatial risk to promote peaceful coexistence between herders and brown bears.
Date/Time: Thursday, February 25th, 2021; 8AM EST; 9PM Beijing time
Location: ZOOM, to join this talk, REGISTER HERE
Please note:
The Snow Leopard Network is delighted to partner with WCS in offering this training Module. Module 9 introduces participants to practical tools for monitoring wildlife and potential threats across snow leopard habitat. Do join us!
The Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART), has rapidly become the global standard for protection monitoring and management. SMART is currently used in over 900 conservation areas and 60 countries worldwide. The use of SMART is however still limited across the snow leopard range. The “SMART Approach”, uses patrol monitoring data in management cycles that are aimed at step-by-step improvements in patrol quality. When applied properly, this approach can produce substantial improvements in wildlife protection. SMART monitoring makes it possible to measure trends in wildlife populations, patrol effort, poaching pressures, and other threats, and assess whether protection capacity is sufficient. SMART can help address threats to snow leopards, their prey species and their habitat and secure their survival. It is also possible to use advanced features of SMART to design surveys and sampling regimes for ungulate prey surveys.
The main goal of the module is to provide advanced understanding of the functionality of the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) in the context of adaptive management and the snow leopard’s range. Participants who complete the short course will:
In summary participants will be exposed to the following practical tools:
****please note Session 2 will also be offered in Russian on March 12th and more information will soon be available
Samantha Strindberg Ph.D
Samantha Strindberg is a Conservation Scientist and Wildlife Statistician in the Global Conservation Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), a US-based NGO. She provides statistical design and analysis assistance to WCS staff based at terrestrial and marine field sites world-wide. She focuses in particular, on the appropriate application of continually evolving specialized techniques for wildlife surveys, and on conducting statistical analyses to investigate ecological and human-influenced relationships relevant to conservation management.
Samantha also contributes to strategic conservation planning, by developing conceptual models and theories of change, and by designing monitoring programs to assess the effectiveness of conservation activities. She provides training workshops on wildlife survey methods and the design of monitoring programs most recently in conjunction with the SMART Ecological Records software. She is a member of the Committee of Scientific Advisors on Marine Mammals with the Marine Mammal Commission.
Samantha holds a Ph.D. in Statistics focused on Wildlife Population Assessment from the University of St Andrews, Scotland. While there, she was part of the Research Unit for Wildlife Population Assessment (RUWPA), and also worked on projects including the mapping and survey design component of the Distance software, the International Whaling Commission’s Database-Estimation Software System, as well as data entry software for cetacean surveys. Samantha originally majored in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. During this time, she also worked on fisheries and marine mammal population assessments. She has published four book chapters on distance sampling and a diverse set of peer-reviewed papers covering topics such as abundance estimation, spatial distribution, temporal trends, survey techniques, and evidence-based conservation.
Michiel Hotte
Michiel has a Master’s Degree in Business Economics and Management from the University of Amsterdam and has worked in The Netherlands as a management consultant for KMPG and for Deloitte & Touche. Since 1996, he has been involved in conservation in the Russian Far East, from 1997, as Director of Tigris Foundation (a Dutch NGO for the protection of Amur leopards and tigers that he established) and between 2003 and 2008, as a staff member of the Zoological Society of London. Since 2006, he has been driving efforts of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Russia Program to design and introduce SMART systems (and before that MIST) for monitoring and adaptive management of patrol efforts. WCS has assisted with introducing SMART to seven federal-level protected areas in Amur tiger habitat in the Russian Far East and to one wildlife management agency operating outside protected areas.
Since 2016, Michiel has also worked on SMART projects in Central Asia. He assisted with the design and introduction of SMART for patrol efforts led by WCS in a protected area for snow leopards in the Wakhan Province of Afghanistan. In 2018, Michiel conducted a 5-day SMART introduction workshop for the Kazakh conservation NGO ACBK and various protected areas and protection agencies. In 2018, he conducted a 3-day SMART introduction workshop in Bishkek (together with Tony Lynam) for participants mainly from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia. Since 2019, he has been assisting UNDP and its partners in Uzbekistan with the introduction of SMART to two pilot sites; the Gissar and Chatkal strict reserves in snow leopard habitat. If funding will be secured, Michiel will later this year start work on a pilot project for the introduction of SMART patrol management in two pilot reserves with snow leopards in Kyrgyzstan.
Antony Lynam
Antony Lynam joined the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in 1996. A trained ecologist and conservation scientist, he previously worked for the Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management and University of California, Riverside, and has 30 years of experience implementing and advising wildlife conservation and management projects in Australia, Bangladesh, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Russian Far East, South Sudan, Tanzania and Thailand. Throughout his career with WCS Antony has helped pilot the use of new technologies for solving conservation problems at our sites and landscapes. This began with the use of passive and active infrared camera-traps for monitoring tigers and other endangered mammals in Indochina (1997-2004), training conservation field staff in GPS and navigation techniques (1999-present), introducing mobile data collecting devices for patrolling (2013-present) and use of remote sensing data for deforestation and threats mapping (FIRMS). He collaborated with other experts to publish technical papers on integrated technology for conservation and has presented the results of WCS conservation applications of technology at professional conferences. Since 2004, Antony helped introduce the use of law enforcement monitoring databases at sites under the CITES MIKE programme in 8 countries in Southeast Asia. During 2011-2013, he helped introduce MIST to sites in SE Asia and since 2013, has been actively involved in the training and implementation of the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) around the world representing WCS on the User Council and leading the SMART Training Taskforce. He led the development of SMART training handbooks and other resources. He has organized and taught SMART trainings at local and national levels in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao, Jamaica, Mongolia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Zambia. He is actively engaged in discussions about integrating new technologies (Earth Ranger, PAWS) with SMART for use in strengthening conservation implementation.
Please see details below, of a new article added to our Bibliography:
Title: Ecosystem Services in a Snow Leopard Landscape: A Comparative Analysis of Two High-elevation National Parks in the Karakoram-Pamir
Authors: Din, J. U., Nawaz, M. A., Norma-Rashid, Y., Ahmad, F., Hussain, K., Ali, H., Adli, D., S., H.
Abstract: The high-elevation mountain ecosystems in the Karakoram and Pamir mountain ranges encompass enchanting landscapes, harbor unique biodiversity, and are home to many indigenous pastoral societies that rely on ecosystem services for their survival. However, our understanding of the value of ecosystem services to a household economy is limited. This information is essential in devising sustainable development strategies and thus merits consideration. In this preliminary study, we attempted to assess and compare the value of selected ecosystem services of the Khunjerab and Qurumbar National Parks (KNP and QNP) in the Karakoram–Pamir in northern Pakistan using market-based and value transfer methods. Our results indicated that the economic benefits derived from the 2 high-elevation protected areas were US$ 4.6 million (QNP) and US$ 3.8 million (KNP) per year, translating into US$ 5955 and US$ 8912 per household per year, respectively. The monetary benefits from provisioning services constituted about 93% in QNP and 48% in KNP, which vividly highlights the prominence of the economic benefits generated from the protected areas for the welfare of disadvantaged communities. Together with the regulatory and cultural services valued in this study, the perceived economic impact per household per year was 10–15 times higher than the mean household income per year. Considering the limited livelihood means and escalating poverty experienced by buffer zone communities, these values are substantial. We anticipate that communities’ dependency on resources will contribute to increased degradation of ecosystems. We propose reducing communities’ dependency on natural resources by promoting sustainable alternative livelihood options and recognizing ecosystem services in cost–benefit analyses when formulating future policies.
URL: https://snowleopardnetwork.org/bibliography/Din_et_al.pdf
Please see details below, of a new article to our Bibliography:
Title: Understanding people’s responses toward predators in the Indian Himalaya
Authors: Bhatia, S., Suryawanshi, K., Redpath, S. M., Mishra, C
Abstract: Research on human–wildlife interactions has largely focused on the magnitude of wildlife‐caused damage, and the patterns and correlates of human attitudes and behaviors. We assessed the role of five pathways through which various correlates potentially influence human responses toward wild animals, namely, value orientation, social interactions (i.e. social cohesion and support), dependence on resources such as agriculture and livestock, risk perception and nature of interaction with the wild animal. We specifically evaluated their influence on people’s responses toward two large carnivores, the snow leopard Panthera uncia and the wolf Canis lupus in an agropastoral landscape in the Indian Trans‐Himalaya. We found that the nature of the interaction (location, impact and length of time since an encounter or depredation event), and risk perception (cognitive and affective evaluation of the threat posed by the animal) had a significant influence on attitudes and behaviors toward the snow leopard. For wolves, risk perception and social interactions (the relationship of people with local institutions and inter‐community dynamics) were significant. Our findings underscore the importance of interventions that reduce people’s threat perceptions from carnivores, improve their connection with nature and strengthen the conservation capacity of local institutions especially in the context of wolves.
Very warm New Year greetings to all.
The SLN training initiative continues in 2021. In followup to last years multi-disciplinary snow leopard training modules we will begin the year with a short module- Active listening in community conservation– that builds on Module 3’s PARTNERS Principle’s community conservation focus. This January module was specifically requested by the Module 3 training participants in September and we are delighted to welcome Juliette Young and Ajay Bijoor to lead this session.
Please note that this training will be a one off intensive session taking place mid January- so if interested do not miss it! This Module is offered thanks to the support of the University of Bourgogne Franche-Comte, Nature Conservation Foundation and the Snow Leopard Trust.
About the course
When working with communities and local people, our ability to listen attentively can go a long way in gaining a greater understanding of the context and the perspectives of different people. It also is key to building trust with communities and individuals. In order to really understand and empathise with others it is essential to be able to listen to what others are saying, without distraction, without hearing what you think you should hear, and without immediately jumping to conclusions. Active listening is a skill that can be learned and does help us as conservationists in the practice of empathy. It does require however concentration, practice and reflection. This course will introduce you to the principles of Active Listening and give you practical tools to build these skills.
Juliette Young is a Professor at the University of Bourgogne Franche-Comte, where she studies the human dimensions of biodiversity conservation. Much of her work focuses on the role of different actors, especially decision-makers and local communities, in the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity. She has been working with the Snow Leopard Trust since 2016 on training in community-based conservation.
Ajay Bijoor supports conservation efforts in the regions of Ladakh and Spiti valley in India. Over the last eight years, he has worked on setting up, running and monitoring community-conservation efforts in these regions. This effort aims at trying to create conditions conducive for conservation. More recently he has also been facilitating the process of building capacity for community-based conservation in snow leopard range countries.
Justine Shanti Alexander is the Executive Director of the Snow Leopard Network. She provides support to the evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of community conservation initiatives to partners across the snow leopard range. Justine also acts as the Regional Ecologist for the Snow Leopard Trust and supports research and conservation work across in China, Mongolia, Pakistan, India and Pakistan.
Criteria for participation
Planned Schedule
Applications
