Author: sln_g5rd8x

Oldest Woolly Rhino Fossil Discovered in Tibet: Extinct snow leopards also found in this fossil bed

By Anissa Haddadi | September 2, 2011 3:37 PM GMT

A woolly rhino fossil was discovered by scientists as they dug up on the Tibetan Plateau is believed to be the oldest specimen of its kind to be found.

According to scientists, the newly discovered skull belongs to previously unknown species of ancient rhino now classified as Coelodonta thibetana and can vaguely be described as a woolly animal that came equipped with a snow shovel on its head.

The rhino was found in Tibet’s Zanda Basin, an area is rich in fossil beds, and this specimen was unearthed along with examples of extinct horse, antelope, snow leopard, badger and many other kinds of mammals, the BBC reported.

The creature lived some 3.6 million years ago and the new discovery could show that animals that lived during Ice Age were able to adapt to the difficult Tibetan Climate.

It would also help explain why so many different species travelled through North America, Europe and Asia during the last Ice Age beginning about 2.8 million years ago, by showing how animals that had previously adapted to cold environment in the Himalayas later expanded to other regions.

“There is a general principle, called Bergmann’s Rule, that suggests animals tend to increase their body size in colder environments,” Discovery News quoted co-author Xiaoming Wang, as saying.

“Large-bodied animals have relatively smaller surface areas to lose heat and thus conserve heat better — it’s a matter of physics,” he added.

“The extinct Tibetan woolly rhino had developed special adaptations for sweeping snow using its flattened, forward-leaning horn to reveal vegetation, a useful behaviour for survival in the harsh Tibetan climate,” Wang explained.

“They just happily came down from the high altitude areas and expanded to the rest of Eurasia,” he also told the BBC before adding “Woolly rhino were preyed on by spotted hyenas and they were eaten pretty thoroughly; the hyenas liked the bones.”

Tibet has also been home to other cold-adapted animals like the Tibetan wild yak, snow leopards and blue sheep and many animal experts maintain that Tibet was the birthplace for many species that later survived through the Ice Age and beyond.

http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/207737/20110902/oldest-woolly-rhino-fossil-discovered-in-tibet.htm

Predation Report From Baltistan Pakistan, Prepared by Ghulam Mohammad

The Doghro village is located in Shigar valley Baltistan; at a distance of 80 km from Skardu Town. The altitude of this village is about 2500 m. There are 104 households with the population of 637. The main source of income of the village is agriculture and livestock. The pastures of the village are situated in extreme slopes, vegetation and rocky. The availability of water is very limited in the pasture. The wildlife of the area is ibex, snow leopard, wolf, chakor, ram chakor. Each year the villager lose many livestock due to predation of snow leopard and wolf.

On the night of August 1st and 2nd, 2011, a snow leopard in Bangspang Dogro village 29 sheep and goats killed in the open range of the area at an altitude of 3893m. PSL staff went to the site of predation to confirm the report. The team found carcasses of thirteen sheep and nine goats. The people in the pasture said that they slaughtered seven injured livestock and they claim that many small animals are still missing. Most animals had visible and prominent injury marks on their neck. The villagers don’t have a cattle shed. So they keep all animals in open range. PSL-BWCDO is planning to provide predator proof corral to the villagers during the current year. PSL is currently assessing the extent of the damage and evaluating the insurance claims. PSL will pay the claims once all necessary steps have been taken.
The District Wildlife Officer from Baltistan region provided the much needed logistical and administrative support to PSL-BWCDO in the assessment of the damages.

Cat among the People: Snow leopard conservation in India

30 July 2011

Snow leopards share a particularly punishing habitat with people in the higher reaches of the Himalayas, with resources scarce and vegetation sparse. The conventional conservation model of separating wild animals and people simply does not work here. India’s green establishment is showing signs of accepting this reality, if only grudgingly

BY Jay Mazoomdaar
So you know they are called ‘ghosts of the mountain’. Rarely spotted (they are as good as camouflage artists ever get), never heard (the only one that ever roared was Tai Lung in Kung Fu Panda, but then he was also nasty) and barely understood (few behavioural studies have been attempted), they exist in smaller numbers in India than even tigers.
But this is really not just about the most mysterious if not charismatic of all big cats—snow leopards.
What you probably do not know is that the cat’s natural habitat in India is a 180,000 sq km expanse—nearly the size of Karnataka—of Himalayan desert that spans the above-the-treeline reaches of five states: Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Cold and arid, this region is the source of most north Indian rivers.
And yet, such a vast and critical expanse has rarely drawn the attention of India’s conservation establishment. On paper, there exist more than two dozen Protected Areas (PAs)—sanctuaries and national parks—in this region, covering 32,000 sq km, a figure that equals the combined area of all tiger reserves put together. But in terms of funds, staff and management, these high-altitude PAs are mere markings on a map.
Things were worse in the early 1990s, when, as a young student of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Yash Veer Bhatnagar began studying snow leopards and their species of prey. With sundry forest departments struggling to fill up field staff vacancies in the best of India’s tiger reserves, snow leopards had little hope of being watched over in places far less hospitable to humans. But as Bhatnagar kept tracing the animal’s tracks along Spiti’s snow ridges, he grew increasingly restless thinking up a workable conservation strategy that was proving to be as elusive as the big cat itself.
Nearly two decades on, Dr Bhatnagar and his associates would help shape Project Snow Leopard, a species recovery programme with an innovative plan drafted in 2008 that could, with luck, save the species from extinction.
+++
Dr Bhatnagar was not alone. His senior at the WII, Dr Raghu Chundawat, having studied wildlife in the cold deserts of J&K since the late 1980s, had already reported a startling fact: more than half his subjects in Ladakh, including snow leopards, were found outside the PAs. “There are a number of ecological factors behind this,” explains Dr Chundawat, “sparse resources, extreme climatic conditions, seasonal migration of prey species, etcetera, make the cat very mobile across large ranges.”
As for other efforts, in 1996, Dr Charudutt Mishra, another WII alumnus and a snow leopard expert himself, had set up the Mysore-based Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) with a group of young biologists. It had some valuable field experience to offer, too.
It was Dr Chundawat’s work, however, that gave Project Snow Leopard its broad direction. “Raghu’s was a fantastic study and got us thinking: ‘If 80 per cent of Ladakh had wildlife value, how would securing a few PAs help conservation?’” recalls Dr Bhatnagar.
The question still stands. Spiti in Himachal Pradesh is significant in terms of snow leopard presence, for example, but notifying all of Spiti or Ladakh as a PA would not only be a logistical nightmare, given the difficulty in managing the existing PAs, but also defeat the purpose of conservation on at least two counts.
First, the experience in other snow leopard-range countries shows that merely declaring vast areas as PAs does not help. In Central Asia, for example, Tibet’s Changthang Wildlife Preserve extends over 500,000 sq km, but organised hunting remains a serious threat in most parts; the picture is not very different in Mongolia or Afghanistan.
Second, resources are extremely scarce at high altitudes; like the wildlife there, people must use every bit of land they can access at those Himalayan heights. The conventional model of PA-based conservation demands the securing of inviolate spaces for wildlife. But, in a cold desert, displacing people from existing PAs, leave alone notifying larger ones, amounts to threatening their survival. Besides, can anything justify evicting people from PAs if wildlife is seen to coexist with people in non-PA areas?
But ten years ago, coexistence was too radical an idea to explore for much of India’s conservation establishment.
+++
In the absence of effective protection, what snow leopards once had going for them was a sparse local population in the upper reaches of the Himalayas (less than a person per sq km). In the past two decades or so, however, even those heights have been witness to ‘development’ in the form of roads, dam projects and the like. The most active government agency has been the military, busy defending the country’s borders, and, in the process, slicing and dicing the region with impenetrable fences and encampments. All this has also meant a labour influx, with whom indigenous populations (and their livestock) now compete for natural resources. This has meant overgrazing, and the competition for resources has led to a loss of wild prey for snow leopards. And with the big cats increasingly turning on livestock, they often face human retaliation. Organised poaching has been a reality even here.
Clear that exclusive sanctuaries for snow leopards were not a feasible idea, Bhatnagar and his colleagues focused on understanding the cat and engaging with villagers and the local forest staff to figure out a conservation solution.
In 2001, the NCF’s Mishra had done some groundwork in Spiti’s Kibber Wildlife Sanctuary. Human communities, he found, could be negotiated with to leave wildlife pastures untouched. To look after this area, a few villagers could be hired—picked by locals from among themselves. This model has been in operation in Spiti for several years now, and so far, over 15 sq km has been freed of livestock grazing around Kibber, and the population of bharals (blue sheep), staple prey for snow leopards, has almost trebled since.
Another coexistence success has been Ladakh’s 3,000 sq km Hemis National Park, which is home to around 100 families that live in 17 small villages within it. Their relocation was impossible without subjecting them to destitution, since all the other land of Ladakh was already occupied by either monasteries or local communities. Today, despite the human presence, Hemis has one of the country’s highest snow leopard densities. The park’s villagers, urged by the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust (SLC-IT), an NGO, regulate livestock grazing in pastures used by small Tibetan argali (a prime prey species for snow leopards). According to Radhika Kothari of SLC-IT, this was achieved by the NGO in coordination with the forest department. They launched a sustained awareness drive and offered families incentives such as home-stay tourism and improved corrals for the protection of their livestock.
The basic strategy of engaging local communities remains simple: help protect livestock (by ensuring better herding methods, constructing corrals, offering vaccinations and so on), compensate for losses (via insurance, for example), create income opportunities (community tourism, handicrafts, etcetera), restore traditional values of tolerance towards wildlife, and promote ecological awareness. This story repeats itself in other range countries; livestock insurance and micro-credit schemes are big successes in Mongolia, handicraft in Kyrgyzstan, and livestock vaccination in Pakistan.
Encouraged by early success stories in engaging local communities in J&K and Himachal, the NCF backed a conservation model in the context of the three-decade-old Sloss debate (single large or several small, that is). “The idea of wildlife ‘islands’ surrounded by a ‘sea’ of people does not work in high-altitude areas, where wildlife presence is almost continuous,” explains Dr Bhatnagar, “Instead, communities can voluntarily secure many small patches of very high wildlife value—small cores or breeding grounds spanning 10–100 sq km each—if they have the incentive of escaping exclusionary laws across larger areas [big PAs].”
The NCF has identified 15 ‘small cores’ in Spiti, of which three (at Kibber WLS, near Lossar, and near Chichim) have already been secured through the foundation’s efforts with locals. In Ladakh, too, village elders and the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) agreed to stop grazing activities in seven side-valleys seen to be of high wildlife value—in exchange for assured community access to the rest of the Hemis National Park. It’s a win-win deal.
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The experience of other snow leopard range countries supports the conclusion that sparse human presence does not affect this wild cat’s well-being. A soon-to-be published report on Mongolia by the Seattle-based Snow Leopard Trust (SLT) indicates that the presence or absence of nomadic herders around snow leopards inside as well as outside PAs in the South Gobi Desert does not affect the probability of snow leopards using a particular site. Complementarily, there is no record anywhere in the world of a human death due to a snow leopard attack.
So, by the time Project Snow Leopard drew up its plan in 2008, a diverse team of officials and experts from the Union Ministry of Environment & Forests, WII, WWF and NCF-SLT, apart from five snow leopard states, had come to agree that ‘given the widespread occurrence of wildlife on common land, and the continued traditional land use within PAs, wildlife management in the region needs to be made participatory both within and outside PAs’.
More than one-third of the project budget (at least 3 per cent of the Ministry’s total outlay) was earmarked for facilitating a ‘landscape-level approach’, rationalising ‘the existing PA network’ and developing ‘a framework for wildlife conservation outside PAs’.
Each of the five states was supposed to select a Project Snow Leopard site, a combination of PA and non-PA areas, within a year and set up a state-level snow leopard conservation society with community participation. However, given the slow pace at which governments function, not much has moved since, except in Himachal Pradesh, where the state forest department has set up a participatory management plan for over half of Spiti wildlife division.
The red tape apart, two other factors are threatening to thwart this unique conservation project: the reluctance of the Ministry to release funds to non-PAs, and the indifference of some state forest departments towards a management plan for areas outside sanctuaries and national parks (such a plan must be submitted). “Snow leopards are present in many areas outside PAs, and I have asked for proposals from all high-altitude divisions. But there is no response from the non-wildlife divisions yet. It’s probably a mindset issue,” sighs Srikant Chandola, chief wildlife warden, Uttarakhand.
Perhaps the same mindset prompted a 2010 WWF-India report to recommend only PAs in Uttarakhand as potential sites for snow leopard conservation, though the author Aishwarya Maheshwari now agrees that a landscape approach, “as mentioned in Project Snow Leopard”, is necessary.
Jagdish Kishwan, additional director-general (wildlife) at the Ministry, says that the Centre is keen to invest money in non-PAs, but there are “some technical issues”; moreover, the Ministry’s meagre allocation might end up too thinly spread in doing so.
The Ministry has its own grand recovery plan. Announced almost simultaneously with Project Snow Leopard, it has an ambitious Rs 800 crore scheme, Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats (IDWH), aimed at the recovery of 15 key species including ones found mostly outside PAs, such as: snow leopards, great Indian bustards and vultures. Centrally sponsored, IDWH has earmarked Rs 250 crore for ‘protection of wildlife outside PAs’. The states have been asked to submit their Project Snow Leopard management plans under the IDWH aegis.
If that is the case, what stops the Ministry from releasing money for non-PAs? “India’s 650-odd PAs are our priority. But I agree that certain key species need support outside PAs. We are examining these issues. The Government will find a way to provide funds to non-wildlife divisions under Project Snow Leopard,” assures Kishwan.
Going by the original 2008 document outlining the plan, Project Snow Leopard should have been in its second year of implementation by now.
That it hasn’t yet hit the ground, let’s hope, is not a sign of apathy towards a big cat that has had—for no fault of its own—only a ghostly presence in the consciousness of the establishment.

http://openthemagazine.com/article/nation/cat-among-the-people

Using Technology to Stop Poachers: The Altai Project

August 5, 2011 |
In July 2011, TAP collaborators James Gibbs (SUNY-ESF) and Arkhar NGO led a pair of electronics hobbyists into remote Altai to install first generation electronic poacher detectors. They successfully installed 6 such detectors, and we are already getting reports that they are working nicely, with a few minor glitches in satellite coverage. Read on below to hear the story first hand from Greg and Sean.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did we build?
• Essentially, we have built poacher detection systems within the most common hunting grounds. When a poacher drives a vehicle or lights a fire in one of these areas, a signal is silently sent to enforcement officers by email.
• The devices are solar powered and intended to lay in wait, hidden, 24 hrs per day, 365 days per year.
What impact could the devices have?
• Consider this: In the Altaisky biosphere reserve about 30 rangers patrol the 3,532,234 hectare region. Random patrols could only monitor a tiny fraction of this.
• According to Dr. Gibbs, whose main research focus is in wildlife conservation, this technology could change how parks monitoring poaching. Instead of random patrols, enforcement officers could change their focus to sting operations. The increase in efficiency (and morale) could be very substantial.
• This point was echoed by Russian park enforcement officers. When asked what they may do when the traps are triggered, they said they could fly in with helicopters to make an arrest. Right now, helicopters are not warranted for such low probability of arrests.
• Safer for the rangers. There is a strategic benefit to knowing that poachers are quite possibly in a specific region. Random patrols never have this certainty – meetings are often a surprise to both sides. Rangers have been killed recently in Siberia, not far from where we have been working. Nobody knows who killed them but it was likely poachers and smugglers.
Was it successful?
• Yes, the concept has been proven to work. All six units we installed are up and running and sending ”check in” messages. They were even tripped successfully a week later on a blind test. In addition, we established a strong working collaboration with the Russian nature reserve rangers that will allow us to further develop and enhance the poacher detection systems.
Why Siberia?
• It is a long way to travel to implement prototypes, but we did want to test them under the harshest conditions.
• Altai has some of the most endangered species that are at risk of poachers. Poaching is a serious problem in the region and stopping it now while there are still animals left is key.
• Dr. Gibbs and The Altai Project both have long-term collegial relationships with people in the region.
Why amateur electronics?
• Wildlife biology and amateur electronics are, oddly enough, a natural fit. Custom electronics is very expensive to develop, yet wildlife conservation is typically stretched for funding.
• Dr. Gibbs contacted us in the hopes that we could alter one of our hobby projects to fit his needs. We were interested and thought the cause was good so took on the work on a shoestring budget. Perhaps because amateur electronics enthusiasts have to work on small budgets we were pre-adapted to making a contribution to saving endangered wildlife where the budgets are also surprisingly modest.
The Story
A few years ago, a few Victoria friends got together and started a small club to work on electronics projects. They meet every Thursday night and call themselves “Geeknight”. At Geeknight there’s a lot of rivalry. Greg and Sean started building and racing GPS guided boats on Victoria’s Elk Lake. Sean’s ultimately crashed into a rock wall at about 30 KM/H, Greg’s worked properly. That’s about par for the course. After racing GPS boats, Greg and Sean had an idea to send a small solar powered, autonomous boat out into the Pacific Ocean (www.solarcrawler.com). It is a big project and we ended up getting deeper into GPS, solar power and efficient design than we ever thought.
We blogged about it and shared a lot of what we were doing on-line – both about our progress and how we were doing things. About a year into the project, somebody commented on one of our posts. It was a section on how we hacked into a device called a “SPOT GPS Messenger”. These handy devices make it possible for hikers to send an “I’m OK” or a “Help” message to people back home – virtually anywhere on Earth. We had made the SPOT device solar powered and took control over the user interface with a circuit board we designed. This was all so that we could get a GPS position on this autonomous boat long after it had been launched.
The commenter was intrigued and after a few on-line comments, said he thought what we had developed could be used in wildlife conservation. He asked if we wanted to collaborate on a project. To be honest, there are a lot of internet scams and our blog was getting spammed ten times a day, so we did the prudent thing and Googled him. It turned out he – Dr. James Gibbs – is a PhD Professor of Conservation Biology in Syracuse, New York. He is really well published and researches wildlife conservation, including the behaviour of wildlife poachers. He spends many months each year in the field in far reaching places around the world. We began to correspond with James and after a few days we had roughed out a project where James would use some of his grant funding to cover prototyping expenses and Greg, Dave and Sean would volunteer time. We knew at the time that travelling to install these electronics out in the wilderness would be part of it, if it got to that stage.
James described the problem succinctly: How do you protect wildlife in a zone that is millions of hectares with only a few conservation officers?
He described the situation as a needle-in-a-haystack. Area patrols can only cover a very small fraction of the area and then only briefly. Poachers might only enter an area once every few months. Catching poachers of endangered species is very tricky, and the odds are against the animals. Snow leopards for example: there are only about 3,000-7,000 left in the world (about 150 left in Russia) and it is estimated that 10-20% are lost each year due to poaching. The cats are resilient, so given a chance they can rebound, moving back into the area and reproducing. That’s how they have been hanging on – reproductive potential.
Dr. Gibbs’ research is about analyzing the behaviour patterns of poachers. Although the areas are vast, poachers need to go through certain pinch points such as roads or places to stay at night. His idea was to detect when humans enter a pinch point zone and then send an alert to wildlife conservation officers. After some discussion and a lot of emails we designed and built small, solar powered, concealable electronics capable of monitoring an area 24 hrs per day, 365 days per year.
Detection
There are a variety of detectable ways that humans are distinct from animals – they light fires, drive cars, operate machinery, fire rifles, have human faces. So, we have built and are building sensors that:
• detect campfires
• detect vehicles on road ways
• detect human faces in images
• detect motor and gun shot sounds
Communication
A significant challenge to monitoring these remote areas is that there are virtually no means to transmit information. However, the SPOT devices mentioned above work almost anywhere in the world. The devices use the SPOT GPS Messenger made by SPOT LLC to let conservation officers know when a sensor has been triggered and where. Depending on the situation, we may also trigger a photograph of whatever triggers the sensor. The really innovative aspect of this technology is that it is real time. Conservation officers will receive an email only a few minutes after the devices are triggered. If all goes well, they could intercept the poachers before they do damage.
Travel
James brought Jennifer Castner into the project to help with logistics. Jennifer is the director of The Altai Project (www.altaiproject.org – a project of Earth Island Institute), located near San Francisco and specializes in grassroots environmental conservation in Siberia. She is skilled in logistics and speaks fluent Russian. Through the two of them, they were able to raise grant funding through the Weeden Foundation and Trust for Mutual Understanding for further prototypes and travel. On July 6th, Sean and Greg travelled to Russia to meet with James, Sergey Spitsyn, a Russian wildlife biologist and director of Arkhar NGO, and two Russian rangers – Pavel Aronov and Sergey Abramov. Together they spent 11 days in very remote areas of the Altai Republic in South-central Siberia. At the direction of the Russian wildlife biologist, they installed six units. All are functioning. Some actually have already been tripped. We learned later these were tripped by a known expedition. But at least we know they work!
A Rough but Rewarding Trip
Although the trip was ultimately successful, it was not without challenges. Sean’s backpack didn’t arrive in Moscow – it was misrouted and delayed in Vancouver. That was pivotal to the trip. At the urging of the Russian hosts, we did not wait two days for the bag to catch up to us because we were pressed for time already. The pack had some really useful things in it – spare parts, solar regulators, and Sean’s sleeping bag and mat.
Some of the devices were damaged in the travel – 16000 km of flight travel and 700 km of road and off-road travel each way. Luckily we had spare parts and were able to deploy all six that the rangers wanted. As a result, Sean and Greg had to improvise on some of the installations by using parts we scavenged from other components. It’s difficult to do in a tent in the middle of nowhere. But, in the end, all the sensors we installed are up and running, still sending us check-in messages.
The Region
The new technology was deployed in the Altai Republic in Siberia. The region is home to many endangered species including snow leopards, Argali big horn sheep and musk deer, species depleted almost everywhere by overhunting and poaching. The region is high in the mountains, up to 4500 meters above sea level (approx 10,000 feet) with temperature ranges of -50ºC to +30ºC. Common in the region are hawks, ground squirrels, cranes and giant 40 pound marmots. We saw a glimpse of a wolverine and signs of argali.
Next Steps
We returned to Canada more enthusiastic than ever. During the travels, James, Greg and Sean discussed ways of improving what we’ve got and expanding the capabilities. We already have funding to develop new sensors and travel to South America in about 6 months. There, we’ll be doing field trials on a completely different kind of sensors – detecting human faces, motor sounds and using “break beam” traps. Our collaborations with James and Jennifer and the Russian wildlife biologists are hopefully just beginning. We will be pursing additional grant funding to expand the number of devices into a full network in Altai. We hope to mature the technology by developing and marketing a “plug-and-play” version that is easier to install in the field.

http://altaiproject.org/?p=1182

Supreme Court in Russia’s Altai overrules acquittal of VIP poachers

GORNO-ALTAISK, August 11 (RIA Novosti)

he Altai Republic’s Supreme Court has overruled the acquittal of poachers, two of them high-ranking officials, convicted of hunting endangered mountain sheep, and ordered a retrial with a new panel of judges.

A helicopter carrying government officials crashed near Chernaya Mountain in Altai in January 2009, killing seven people, including the Russian president’s envoy to the State Duma, Alexander Kosopkin, and an environmental off icial.

The officials were allegedly on an illegal hunting expedition when the helicopter crashed. Three of the four people who survived the crash – the republic’s deputy prime minister Anatoly Bannykh, deputy chief of a Moscow university, Nikolai Kapranov, and State Duma official and businessman Boris Belinsky – were brought to trial.

The investigation into the case was closed twice over the lack of evidence of the suspects’ involvement in poaching. The court eventually acquitted them, frustrating environmentalists and animals rights activists.

The Argali sheep is included on Russia’s list of protected species as well as on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) list. Hunting wild rams has been forbidden in Russia since 1930.

The case sparked public outcry after images of the helicopter’s wreckage, in which dead wild rams were clearly seen, a ppeared on the internet soon after the crash.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20110811/165705261.html

New book about snow leopard is published in English by Kazakhstan’s Snow Leopard Fund

The new book about snow leopard
is published in English

“IRBIS – The Snow Leopard”

The edition is carried out at the initiative of the Kazakhstan’s “Snow Leopard Fund” (Ust Kamenogorsk) at the financial support of UNDP/GEF – Kazakhstan within the limits of the project “Conservation and suistanable use of biodiversity in the Kazakhstan’s part of Altai-Sayan ecoregion”.

In 2009 biologists Oleg and Irina Loginov had a book about a snow leopard “The Snow Leopard. A symbol of Celestial Mountains” (on Russian) which already became a curiosity. And recently there was also a new colourful picture album about a snow leopard, only already in English. The picture album can be interesting to foreign tourists. It also a fine gift for those who goes on a visit abroad.
“The Silver Wonder”, “Spirit of Mountains” – so faithfully and admiration are spoken by people about a snow leopard. At many people irbis is sacred animal. Meanwhile, number of a kind steadily decreases because of poaching on great parts of its areal. In the middle of XX century in the Central Asia the tiger and the Asian cheetah have been completely exterminated. The similar fate expected and irbis if measures on preservation of this most beautiful silvery cat of high mountains have not been taken. In 1948 the International Union of Nature Conservation – IUCN, become by the initiator of the edition of the Red Book has been created. The snow leopard was is taken under special protection not only the IUCN Red List and regional Red Books, but also Washington Convention – CITES, and also laws on protection of fauna and criminal codes which exist in all countries where irbis lives.
Despite strengthening of measures of protection and special attention of the international organisations to a snow leopard last years, its number continues to decrease. The failure in the field of education of the various strata of society is especially great. In public consciousness the snow leopard image – “The Master of Celestial Mountains”, and a predator never attacking people, can be very attractive. But the potential of this appeal while is used very poorly. And kind protection is still insufficient – more than 90 % of habitats of a snow leopard are not covered by especially protected natural territories. But all places of snow leopard habitats in mountains, as a rule, have no intensive economic activities, therefore can quite become extensive natural parks or game reserves. Examples to that are – the Himalayan kingdom Bhutan, the country which quarter is made by national parks. There too there live snow leopards. On any animals in the country hunting is forbidden also they involve tourists who bring in the income to the country much bigger, than the industry. In Nepal and India also it is much given to irbis protection and the considerable quantity extensive NPT is created. It is necessary to follow these countries an example.

The snow leopard can help the Central Asian countries to become even more attractive to tourists, climbers and researchers of all world.

It will be promoted also by Loginov’s book-picture album about a snow leopard. From it is possible to learn all about this cat who as though unites the largest Asian states of the world: Russia, China, India, Kazakhstan, Pakistan and some more other highlands of the Central Asia, living in high mountains along borders of these states. On its pages there are data about number of a rare animal, the area of its habitats in the world, a protection condition in the most important national parks and reserves both national parks and other most interesting details of biology and behaviour. The book is written emotionally, is entertaining and accessible to the widest audience. It can be used and as the additional manual for schoolboys and the students, and for the foreign tourists, wishing to learn more about a live symbol of “Celestial Mountains”, and in general for people all not indifferent and loving the nature. At a book writing, the big work with the literature is spent, the big material and knowledge which have laid down in its basis is saved up. The unique photos of a wild snow leopard made in the nature in Almaty area in Dzungarian Ala-Tau (Kazakhstan) by Renat Minibaev and beautiful snow leopard portraits of Raphael Kettsian from Ekaterinburg (Russia), and also water colour drawings by Victor Bakhtin, Victor Pavlushin and Oleg Loginov’s pictures have decorated a picture album and have made its unique. Irina Loginova fairy tale ”Spirits of Sacred Mountain” also is included in the edition, illustrated with drawings of the author.

Data about a picture album:
The format – 21,5 х 28 sm
Cover – the firm, laminated matte
Pages – 136,
Illustrations – 205
Circulation trial – 250 copies.

Coordinates of authors: Kazakhstan,
Phones: 8-72331-39347, +7-705-4616016,
e-mail: irbisslc@yandex.ru

From: Логинов Олег [mailto:irbisslc@yandex.kz]
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 11:21 AM
To: sln-members@lists.snowleopardnetwork.org
Subject: Re: SLN – SLN News: New book about snow leopard is published in English (Kazakhstan’s Snow Leopard Fund)

Hello Rana,

Thanks for dispatch of the information on a picture album and placing in a blog. We already receive letters. Except a picture album, in Novosibirsk (Russia) is published Irina Loginovoj’s fairy tale for children in Russian with drawings of known artist Victor Pavlushina. There is a transfer and into English as a part of a picture album. There is an idea to publish separately same fairy tale in English and we search for means for this purpose.

Sincerely, Oleg

WCS Discovers Healthy Snow Leopard Population In Afghanistan

**NEWS RELEASE**

CONTACT: STEPHEN SAUTNER: (1-718-220-3682; ssautner@wcs.org)

JOHN DELANEY: (1-718-220-3275; jdelaney@wcs.org)

WCS Discovers Healthy Snow Leopard Population In Afghanistan

Camera trap surveys show surprising numbers of elusive big cats in Wakhan Corridor in northeastern Afghanistan

With USAID support, WCS is working with Afghanistan communities on conservation to benefit wildlife and human livelihoods

NEW YORK (July 13, 2011) – The Wildlife Conservation Society has discovered a surprisingly healthy population of rare snow leopards living in the mountainous reaches of northeastern Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor, according to a new study.

The discovery gives hope to the world’s most elusive big cat, which calls home to some of the world’s tallest mountains. Between 4,500 and 7,500 snow leopards remain in the wild scattered across a dozen countries in Central Asia.

The study, which appears in the June 29th issue of the Journal of Environmental Studies, is by WCS conservationists Anthony Simms, Zalmai Moheb, Salahudin, Hussain Ali, Inayat Ali and Timothy Wood.

WCS-trained community rangers used camera traps to document the presence of snow leopards at 16 different locations across a wide landscape. The images represent the first camera trap records of snow leopards in Afghanistan. WCS has been conserving wildlife and improving local livelihoods in the region since 2006 with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“This is a wonderful discovery – it shows that there is real hope for snow leopards in Afghanistan,” said Peter Zahler, WCS Deputy Director for Asia Programs. “Now our goal is to ensure that these magnificent animals have a secure future as a key part of Afghanistan’s natural heritage.”

According to the study, snow leopards remain threatened in the region. Poaching for their pelts, persecution by shepherds, and the capture of live animals for the illegal pet trade have all been documented in the Wakhan Corridor. In response, WCS has developed a set of conservation initiatives to protect snow leopards. These include partnering with local communities, training of rangers, and education and outreach efforts.

Anthony Simms, lead author and the project’s Technical Advisor, said, “By developing a community-led management approach, we believe snow leopards will be conserved in Afghanistan over the long term.”

WCS-led initiatives are already paying off. Conservation education is now occurring in every school in the Wakhan region. Fifty-nine rangers have been trained to date. They monitor not only snow leopards but other species including Marco Polo sheep and ibex while also enforcing laws against poaching. WCS has also initiated the construction of predator-proof livestock corrals and a livestock insurance program that compensates shepherds, though initial WCS research shows that surprisingly few livestock fall to predators in the region.

In Afghanistan, USAID has provided support to WCS to work in more than 55 communities across the country and is training local people to monitor and sustainably manage their wildlife and other resources. One of the many outputs of this project was the creation of Afghanistan’s first national park – Band-e-Amir – which is now co-managed by the government and a committee consisting of all 14 communities living around the park.

Snow leopards have declined by as much as 20 percent over the past 16 years and are considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

WCS is a world leader in the care and conservation of snow leopards. WCS’s Bronx Zoo became the first zoo in the Western Hemisphere to exhibit these rare spotted cats in 1903. In the past three decades, nearly 80 cubs have been born in the Bronx and have been sent to live at 30 zoos in the U.S. and eight countries in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America.

The Wildlife Conservation Society saves wildlife and wild places worldwide. We do so through science, global conservation, education and the management of the world’s largest system of urban wildlife parks, led by the flagship Bronx Zoo. Together these activities change attitudes toward nature and help people imagine wildlife and humans living in harmony. WCS is committed to this mission because it is essential to the integrity of life on Earth. Visit: www.wcs.org

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Snow Leopard Foundation Pakistan: ‘Solid Waste Management Campaign During Shandur Festival’

‘Solid Waste Management Campaign During Shandur Festival’
Posted by Staff Reporter on Mon, 2011-07-11 19:08 | filed underGilgit-Baltistan

World Wide Fund for Nature Pakistan, Saving Wetlands Sky High Programme, Pakistan Wetlands Programme-Northern Alpine Wetlands Complex and Snow Leopard foundation Pakistan jointly organized a mass awareness campaign about Solid Waste Management during Shandur Polo Festival on July (7th- 9th ), 2010.

The purpose of the solid waste cleanup campaign was to create awareness among the visitors about solid waste and its impact on the aesthetics, lake and associated ecosystems. The participating organizations aimed at aggrandising public participation in solid waste management.

http://www.dardistantimes.com/content/solid-waste-management12-campaign-during-shandur-festival33
About 80 dedicated volunteers from Shandur Local Support Organization (SLSO), Teru, Shandur Area Development Organization (SADO), Luspur and Youth Advocacy Forum (YAF), Chitral participated in waste collection and assessment (composition, sources, per capita generation rate and total solid waste generation during the festival).

Informational banners were installed at major entry points and key locations to guide the visitors through managing solid waste and to remain sensitive about the ecosystems. The organizers also held random group meetings with visitors and the polo organizers seeking support in the environmental initiatives taken in this remote part of the world. The volunteers of the participating organizations diligently picked, sorted, transported about 3.3 tones solid waste and disposed off in a designated landfill site.

The initiative of WWF-P and its partner organizations was highly supported and appreciated by the polo-goers in the Shandur Festival.

Shandur Polo Festival is held, every year during the first week of july, in Shandur— a worldy renowned natural sporting arena situated midway between Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan. Thousands of local and international tourists visit the festival every year.

The story has been contributed from the office of Northern Alpine Wetlands Complex (NAWC), WWF, Pakistan, Jutial Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. (Tel:0092 5811 455658)
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