Abstract: Police have detained a man for trying to smuggle two snow leopards through the Xining Railway Station in northwest China's Qinghai Province. Ma Deliang was stopped by police after he attempted to pass the butchered snow leopards off as “beef” at a shop in Sichuan in southwest China. Suspicious of the contents in Ma's big sack, police asked experts from the local forestry bureau to check the meat and they found it to be flesh of two snow leopards, an endangered species on top state protection. Ma later confessed that he bought the dead snow leopards at a local market and wanted to smuggle them to Deyang, a city in southwest China's Sichuan province. Police also searched Ma's home and found dear heads, antlers and lynx and fox furs. Snow leopards live in highlands of altitudes between 3,000 to 6, 000 m above sea level. The population of the species has dwindled greatly since the 19th century.

Abstract: The snow leopard (Uncia uncia) was listed by the CITES Parties in 1975 on Appendix I. Since then cross-border trade has become an ever increasing threat to snow leopards, but no further measures have been taken in the framework of the convention to stop the on-going illegal trade in live specimen, parts and derivatives. Many range countries did not become a party to CITES till the late 1990s and some have not joined at all. The species is fully protected in every range country under the respective national laws and hunting as well as the trade in live specimen and parts is prohibited. All range countries with the exception of Bhutan have difficulties in enforcing these provisions.
The national and international trade in live specimen, skins and bones is, according to the global network of snow leopard experts (SLN), the major threat to the survival of the species, particularly in Central Asia. (SLSS 2002).
This report is the first of its kind to assimilate the somewhat scarce information available, and to provide the Parties with evidence on the existence of this trade which, if no comprehensive measures are implemented as a matter of urgency, will lead to the extinction of this unique species. It also presents new trade data derived from investigations by the Kirghiz snow leopard enforcement group, Gruppa Bars, which is part of the joint Snow Leopard Conservation Programme of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan and the German Society for Nature Conservation (NABU).