Abstract: Conservation Enterprise is increasingly promoted to support the conservation of species and landscapes through incentives, such as ecotourism, including in the Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA), Nepal. Yet the elusive behaviour of snow leopards here limits opportunities for conservation enterprise, particularly those linked to conventional ecotourism forms. Furthermore, the potential to explicitly link local snow leopard-friendly livestock production systems with the tourist market in the area, via eco-certified livestock products, has not been investigated. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the interest, from supply and demand perspectives, in introducing snow leopard ecotourism services and eco-certified products into the ACA tourist market. Questionnaire data were gathered from 406 tourists and 403 local residents. Our results, of interest to managers and researchers alike, show that there is potential to generate funds and support for both snow leopard conservation and community development, and add to the literature on utilising enterprise initiatives as conservation tools.

Abstract: Snow leopards that prey on poor farmers' livestock pose a twofold problem: they endanger farmers' precarious mountain livelihoods as well as the survival of the snow leopard as a unique species since farmers engage in retaliatory killings. Project Snow Leopard (PSL), a recent pilot initiative in Baltistan, involves a partnership between local farmers and private enterprise in the form of an insurance scheme combined with ecotourism activities. Farmers jointly finance the insurance scheme through the payment of premiums per head of livestock they own, while the remaining funds are provided by profits from trekking expeditions focusing on the snow leopard. The insurance scheme is jointly managed by a village management committee and PSL staff. The scheme is structured in such a way that villagers monitor each other and have incentives to avoid cheating the system.