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Author (up) Bhatnagar, Y.V.; Mathur, V.B.; McCarthy, T.
Title A Regional Perspective for Snow Leopard Conservation In the Indian Trans-Himalaya Type Conference Article
Year 2002 Publication Abbreviated Journal
Volume Issue Pages
Keywords snow; leopard; India; indian; Himalaya; Himalayan; conservation; region; regional; climate; topography; flora; fauna; Tibet; tibetan; protected; area; planning; management; manage; biogeographic; gazelle; kiang; yak; predator; 4900
Abstract The Trans-Himalaya is a vast biogeographic region in the cold and arid rain-shadow of

the Greater Himalaya and is spread over three Indian states. From the conservation

standpoint this region has several unique characteristics. Unlike most other

biogeographic regions of the country, it has wildlife, including large mammals, spread

over the entire region. Another feature is that the harsh climate and topography

provides limited agricultural land and pastures, all of which are currently utilized by

people. The harsh environment has given rise to a specialized assemblage of flora and fauna in

the region that include the endangered snow leopard, a variety of wild sheep and goat,

Tibetan antelope, Tibetan gazelle, kiang and wild yak. The snow leopard is one of the

most charismatic species of the Trans-Himalaya. This apex predator, with a wide

distribution, has ecological importance and international appeal, and is eminently

suitable to be used as both a 'flagship' and an 'umbrella species' to anchor and guide

conservation efforts in the Trans-Himalayan region. Among the 10 Biogeographic Zones in the country, the Trans-Himalaya has a

comparatively large Protected Area (PA) coverage, with over 15,000 km2 (8.2 %) of

the geographical area under the network. In spite of this, the bulk of the large mammal

populations still exist outside the PAs, which include highly endangered species such

as snow leopard, chiru, wild yak, Ladakh urial, kiang and brown bear. Given the sparse resource availability in the Trans-Himalaya and the existing human

use patterns, there are few alternatives that can be provided to resource dependent

human communities in and around PAs. The existing PAs themselves pose formidable

conservation challenges and a further increase in their extent is impractical. The

problem is further compounded by the fact that some of the large PAs have unclear

boundaries and include vast stretches that do not have any direct wildlife values. These

issues call for an alternative strategy for conservation of the Trans-Himalayan tracts

based on a regional perspective, which includes reconciling conservation with

development. In this paper we stress that conservation issues of this region, such as competition for

forage between wild and domestic herbivores and human-wildlife conflicts need to be

addressed in a participatory manner. We suggest an alternative scheme to look at the

zonation of existing PAs and also the Trans-Himalayan region as a whole, to facilitate

better conservation in the region. Also, we emphasize that there is a vital need for

additional resources and a formal setup for regional planning and management under a

centrally sponsored scheme such as the 'Project Snow Leopard'.
Address
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Islt Place of Publication Islt Editor
Language Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes Title, Monographic: Proceedings of the Snow Leopard Survival SummitPlace of Meeting: Seattle,WA Approved no
Call Number SLN @ rana @ 476 Serial 137
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Author (up) Singh, R., Krausman, P. R., Pandey, P., Maheshwari, A., Rawal, R. S., Sharma, S., Shekhar, S.
Title Predicting Habitat Suitability of Snow Leopards in the Western Himalayan Mountains, India Type Journal Article
Year 2020 Publication Biology bulletin Abbreviated Journal
Volume 47 Issue 6 Pages 655-664
Keywords biogeographic distribution, climate, endangered cat, MaxEnt, snow leopard
Abstract The population of snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is declining

across their range, due to poaching, habitat fragmentation, retaliatory

killing, and a decrease of wild prey species. Obtaining information on

rare and cryptic predators living in remote and rugged terrain is

important for making conservation and management strategies. We used the

Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) ecological niche modeling framework to predict

the potential habitat of snow leopards across the western Himalayan

region, India. The model was developed using 34 spatial species

occurrence points in the western Himalaya, and 26 parameters including,

prey species distribution, temperature, precipitation, land use and land

cover (LULC), slope, aspect, terrain ruggedness and altitude. Thirteen

variables contributed 98.6% towards predicting the distribution of snow

leopards. The area under the curve (AUC) score was high (0.994) for the

training data from our model, which indicates pre- dictive ability of

the model. The model predicted that there was 42432 km2 of potential

habitat for snow leop- ards in the western Himalaya region. Protected

status was available for 11247 km2 (26.5%), but the other 31185 km2

(73.5%) of potential habitat did not have any protected status. Thus,

our approach is useful for predicting the distribution and suitable

habitats and can focus field surveys in selected areas to save

resources, increase survey success, and improve conservation efforts for

snow leopards.
Address
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Place of Publication Editor
Language Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes Approved no
Call Number Serial 1629
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