Abstract: Managing wildlife-caused damage to human interests has become an important aspect of contemporary conservation management. Conflicts between pastoralism and carnivore conservation over livestock depredation pose a serious challenge to endangered carnivores worldwide, and have become an important livelihood concern locally. Here, we first review the primary causes of these conflicts, their socio-ecological correlates, and commonly employed mitigation measures. We then describe a community-based program to manage conflicts over livestock depredation by snow leopards Panthera uncia and wolves Canis lupus. A threats-based conceptual model of conflict management is presented. Conflicts over livestock depredation are characterized by complex, multi-scale interactions between carnivore and livestock behavioral ecology, animal husbandry, human psyche, culture, world-views, and socio-economic and education levels of affected peoples. A diversity of commonly employed conflict-mitigation measures is available. They aim at (i) reducing livestock depredation through better livestock herding, use of physical, chemical or psychological barriers, removal of carnivores, and use of livestock guard animals, (ii) offsetting economic losses through damage compensation and insurance programmes, and (iii) increasing peoples’ tolerance of carnivores through indirect approaches such as conservation education and economic incentives. For effective management, conflicts need to be understood along two important dimensions, viz., the reality of damage caused to humans, and the psyche and perceptions of humans who suffer wildlife caused damage. The efficacy of commonly used mitigation measures is variable. A combination of measures that reduce the level of livestock depredation, share or offset economic losses, and improve the social carrying capacity for carnivores will be more effective in managing conflicts than standalone measures

Abstract: In accordance with order of the Ministry of Nature and Tourism,
zoologists of our association have made surveys in three ways such as
reasons why snow leopards attack domestic animals, “Snow leopard” trial
operation to count them and illegal hunting in territories of Khovd,
Gobi-Altai, Bayankhongor, Uvurkhangai and Umnugobi provinces from
September 2009 to January 2010. As result of these surveys it has made
the following conclusions in the followings: Reason to hunt them illegally: the principal reason is that
administrative units have been increased and territories of
administrative units have been diminished. There have been four
provinces in 1924 to 1926, 18 since 1965, 21 since 1990. Such situation
limits movements of herdsmen completely and pastures digressed much than
ever before. As result of such situation, 70% of pastures become desert.
Such digression caused not only heads of animals and also number of
species. Guarantee is that birds such as owls, cuckoo, willow grouse in
banks of Uyert river, Burkhanbuudai mountain, located in Biger soum,
Gobi-Altai province, which are not hunted by hunters, are disappearing
in the recent two decades. For that reason we consider it is urgently
necessary for the government to convert administrative unit structures
into four provinces. This would influence herdsmen moving across
hundreds km and pastures could depart from digression.
Second reason: cooperative movement won. The issues related to management and strengthening of national
cooperatives, considered by Central Committee of Mongolian People's
Revolutionary Party in the meeting in March 1953 was the start of
cooperatives' movement. Consideration by Yu. Tsedenbal, chairman of
Ministers Council, chairman of the MPRP, on report "Result of to unify
popular units and some important issues to maintain entity management of
agricultural cooperatives" in the fourth meeting by the Central
Committee of Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party /MPRP/ on December
16-17, 1959, proclaimed complete victory of cooperative. At the end of
1959, it could unify 767 small cooperative into 389 ones, unify 99.3 %
of herdsmen and socialize 73.3 % of animals. The remaining of animals
amount 6 million 163 thousands animals, and equals to 26.7% of total
animals. This concerned number of animals related to the article
mentioned that every family should have not more that 50 animals in
Khangai zone and not more 75 animals in Gobi desert. It shows that such
number could not satisfy needs of family if such number is divided into
five main animals in separating with reproduction animals and adult
animals. So herdsmen started hunt hoofed animals secretly and illegally
in order to satisfy their meat needs. Those animals included main food
of snow leopard such as ibex, wild sheep, and marmot. Third reason is that the state used to hunt ibex, which are main
nutrition of snow leopards, every year. The administrative unit of the
soum pursued policy to hunt ibex in order to provide meat needs of
secondary schools and hospitals. That's why this affected decrease of
ibex population. Preciously from 1986 to 1990 the permissions to hunt
one thousands of wild sheep and two thousands of ibexes were hunt for
domestic alimentary use every year. Not less than 10 local hunters of every soum used to take part in big
game of ibexes. Also they hunted many ibexes, chose 3-10 best ibexes and
hid them in the mountains for their consummation during hunting.
Fourth reason: hunting of wolves. Until 1990 the state used to give
prizes to hunter, who killed a wolf in any seasons of the year. Firstly
it offered a sheep for the wolf hunter and later it gave 25 tugrugs /15
USD/. Every year, wolf hunting was organized several times especially
picking wolf-cubs influenced spread and population of wolves. So snow
leopard came to the places where wolves survived before and attack
domestic animals. Such situation continued until 1990. Now population of
ibexes has decreased than before 1990 since the state stopped hunting
wolves, population of wolves increased in mountainous zones. We didn't
consider it had been right since it was natural event. However
population of ibexes decreased. Fifth reason: Global warming. In recent five years it has had a drought
and natural disaster from excessive snow in the places where it has
never had such natural disasters before. But Mongolia has 40 million
heads of domestic animals it has never increased like such quantity in
its history before. We consider it is not incorrect that decrease of
domestic animals could give opportunities to raise population of wild
animals. Our next survey is to make attempt to fix heads of snow leopards
correctly with low costs.

Abstract: Background: The order Carnivora is well represented in India, with 58 of the 250 species found globally, occurring here. However, small carnivores figure very poorly in research and conservation policies in India. This is mainly due to
the dearth of tested and standardized techniques that are both cost effective and conducive to small carnivore studies in the field. In this paper we present a non-invasive genetic technique standardized for the study of Indian felids and canids with the use of PCR amplification and restriction enzyme digestion of scat collected in the field.
Findings: Using existing sequences of felids and canids from GenBank, we designed primers from the 16S rRNA region of the mitochondrial genome and tested these on ten species of felids and five canids. We selected restriction enzymes that would cut the selected region differentially for various species within each family. We produced a restriction digestion profile for the potential differentiation of species based on fragment patterns. To test our technique, we used felid PCR primers on scats collected from various habitats in India, representing varied environmental conditions. Amplification success with field collected scats was 52%, while 86% of the products used for restriction digestion could be accurately assigned to species. We verified this through sequencing. A comparison of costs across the various techniques currently used for scat assignment showed that this technique was the most practical and cost effective.
Conclusions: The species-specific key developed in this paper provides a means for detailed investigations in the future that focus on elusive carnivores in India and this approach provides a model for other studies in areas of Asia
where many small carnivores co-occur.

Abstract: The high mountain ranges of South and Central Asia are increasingly being exposed to large-scale development
projects. These areas are home to traditional pastoralist communities and internationally important
biodiversity including the endangered snow leopard Panthera uncia. Development projects rely on
economic cost-benefit analysis, but the ecosystem services in the high Himalayas are poorly understood
and are rarely accounted for. As a first step to fill this gap, we identified the main ecosystem services used
by local people in the Trans-Himalayan Spiti Valley (7591 km2), a region important for conservation of
snow leopards and high mountain biodiversity, and undertook an economic valuation. Stakeholders identified
a range of services, though these were dominated by provisioning services identified by 90% of
respondents. Only 5.4% of the respondents recognised regulatory services and 4.8% recognised cultural
services. The mean economic value of provisioning services was estimated at US$ 3622 ± 149 HH
1
yr
1, which was 3.8 times higher than the average annual household income. Our results underscore
the need to account for ecosystem services in the cost-benefit analyses of large-scale development projects
in addition to assessments of their environmental and social impact.

Abstract: Snow Leopard poaching and trafficking – referred to herein as Snow Leopard crime – is revisited 13 years after TRAFFIC’s first report on the subject, Fading Footprints: The Killing and Trade of Snow Leopards (Theile, 2003). This report builds on a preliminary analysis published in May 2016 (Maheshwari and von Meibom, 2016). It addresses a major information gap concerning the linkage between retaliatory killing for livestock depredation and poaching for trade, and the scale at which both are taking place. The focus is on 12 Snow Leopard range countries: Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. There is little evidence of illegal trade in Snow Leopards outside these countries.
Two sets of data were developed in the research for this report. The first is a Snow Leopard crime database containing records of seizures (legal actions taken by government authorities) and observations (reports of Snow Leopard killing, capture or trade, including market surveys). The database contains records dating back to 1989 (which are discussed in Annex 1), but the analysis focuses on the period since the release of Fading Footprints, the first TRAFFIC report: 2003-June 2016. Seizures are a function of law enforcement effort, effectiveness and publicization, as well as the magnitude of illegal trade, and so observations are an important component of the analysis, particularly for countries where few seizures are made or reported. However, detailed observations are not regularly published, and may be are biased toward countries where there is more effort, so a simple multiple choice survey was designed for Snow Leopard experts. Completed by 42 of them in 2016, and covering all 12 range countries, the survey asked experts for their total number of known cases, case outcomes, and reasons for killing Snow Leopards.
Based on the average number of cases known to experts over the average of nine years spent working in their geographic areas of knowledge, 221-450 Snow Leopards were estimated to have been poached annually since 2008. With the average rate of poaching detection estimated by experts at less than 38%, these numbers could be substantially higher. Of these, 55% are killed in retaliation for livestock depredation, 21% killed for trade and 18% taken by non-targeted methods such as snares. Although retaliatory killing is estimated to account for roughly half of Snow Leopard poaching (55%), experts estimate that there is a 50-50 chance (48%) that a poaching attempt will take place after a depredation incident. On average, experts estimate that 60% of retaliatory and non-targeted poaching incidents result in an attempt to sell; accounting for differences in this estimate between countries, a total of 108-219 Snow Leopards potentially enter into illegal trade. Over 90% of annual Snow Leopard poaching is estimated to occur in five range countries: China (103-236), Mongolia (34-53), Pakistan (23-53), India (21-45) and Tajikistan (20-25).
Given the uncertainties about population numbers, as well as the low rate of poaching detection, it is difficult to assess the impact of this offtake on the viability of the species. Snow Leopard range is used as a proxy for Snow Leopard population numbers; most national Snow Leopard population estimates are derived from extrapolating study site densities across likely range. Although China had by far the highest number of seizures and observations (309 Snow Leopards from 2003-2016) and the highest annual poaching estimate, its share of Snow Leopard crime was not disproportionate to its large share (at least 60%) of Snow Leopard range. Countries flagged for having disproportionate shares of crime levels relative to share of range included Afghanistan and Russia (seizures and observations), and Nepal and Pakistan (annual poaching estimates). China and Russia were most frequently identified as destinations for animals poached in other countries.
The expert survey indicates that the scale of Snow Leopard crime is more serious than apparent from the annual average number of Snow Leopard seized (18) or observed (34) from 2003-2016. This could be in part due to the challenges of law enforcement in the Snow Leopard’s remote montane habitat. Indeed, the survey found that an average of 23% of known cases were investigated by authorities, and only 14% prosecuted.
The minimum number of Snow Leopards in the seizures and observations database fell by 43% from the first half of the analysis period (2003-2009) compared to the second (2010-June 2016) (from 451 to 259). However, the decline was in the number of Snow Leopards observed in trade and in market surveys, which fell by 80% (from 280 to 54), with the largest decline taking place in China. There were more market surveys in the first half of the analysis period (13) than the second (5), but they
TRAFFIC report: An Ounce Of Prevention: Snow Leopard Crime Revisited xi
were repeated in the same places (Kabul, Afghanistan and cities in western China), and far fewer skins were seen (for example, 60 skins in the Chinese city of Linxia in 2007, compared to one in 2011). The numbers of Snow Leopards in other observations were roughly equivalent for the two periods (108 in the first and 100 in the second), but the numbers in trade observations fell by 46% (from 52 to 28). Otherwise, the number of Snow Leopards seized rose by 16% (from 115 to 133), and the number of individual seizure cases rose by 77% (from 44 to 78). The number of poached Snow Leopards seized doubled (from 31 to 60), and the observed number of poached Snow Leopards also increased by 14% (from 56 to 64). The number of Snow Leopards in trade seizures was the same in both periods (55), and the number smuggled roughly equivalent (29 seized in the first period, and 24 seized and observed in the second).
There are three possible interpretations of this situation of rising numbers of Snow Leopards poached (as measured by seizures and observations), steady numbers in smuggling and trade seizures, and steeply declining numbers in trade observations and market surveys. It could be that the limitations of available data and the authors’ inability to collect all of it has resulted in an incorrect picture. It is apparent that illegal trade has become more clandestine and difficult to detect in most countries, so that secondly, it could be increasing, as indicated by the apparent rise in poaching numbers. However, the number of Snow Leopards seized in large cases (more than 3 Snow Leopards per case), indicative of organized trafficking activity, declined from 60 in the 2003-2009 to 23 in 2010-2016. This points to a third possibility: that trade (and perhaps demand) is declining, possibly due to increased enforcement, but local people continue to opportunistically sell Snow Leopards they poached primarily to protect livestock.
With skins being the main Snow Leopard product type in trade (78%), the primary motive for buyers appears to be for display, with some observations of skins hanging on walls in homes and restaurants, as well as stuffed taxidermy specimens. Priced in the thousands of US dollars, skins have been described as a “symbol of wealth and power.” However, there probably exists very little in the way of a definable consumer segment deliberately seeking out such items. They are most likely purchased opportunistically – “impulse buys” – and most consumers probably only buy one in their lifetime. Once in a home, the illegal possession has very low probability of detection, and moreover law enforcement authorities may be reluctant to investigate in such situations. The purchase itself also has a low probability of detection, as indicated by the sharp decline in observed numbers of Snow Leopard skins being offered for sale. While growing personal wealth in Asia has been highlighted as a primary driver of illegal wildlife trade, poverty is also recognized as a driver, and the Snow Leopard trade may be more driven by rural people in Snow Leopard habitat attempting to make money and make up for livestock losses to predators than by wealthy people placing orders for luxury household decorations. Unlike the demand-driven Tiger trade (Annex 2), to which it otherwise bears many similarities, the market for Snow Leopards may be more a function of supply, and actions should focus on the communities living near Snow Leopards to reduce incentives to poach and sell. This notion is reflected in the aphorism behind the title of this report: an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure. Preventing livestock losses, offsetting the costs of losses and improving community support for Snow Leopard conservation are the most important approaches to tackling the problem of Snow Leopard trafficking.
Recommendations focus on addressing the leading cause of Snow Leopard poaching (retaliatory killing/Human-Wildlife Conflict) as well as measures to stem illegal trade, and are primarily targeted at the 12 Snow Leopard range countries. They are aligned with existing recommendations and planned actions, including CITES recommendations, draft Decisions and consultant’s reports around implementation of Resolution Conf. 12.5 (CITES 2015, 2016; Nowell and Pervushina, 2014); the Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program (GSLEP, 2013, 2015, n.d.); the SLN’s Snow Leopard Survival Strategy (SLN, 2014); and WWF’s Snow Leopard Species Action Plan (WWF, 2015 and Sharma, 2016). There was also an informal discussion about recommendations to address poaching and illegal trade at the Second China Snow Leopard Forum, held in Urumqi, Xinjiang province 24-26 August 2016 (B. Weckworth, Panthera, pers. comm.).
Recommendations are grouped according to four primary actors in Snow Leopard conservation: 1) governments of Snow Leopard range countries; 2) communities living in Snow Leopard range; 3) conservation organizations and Snow Leopard experts; and 4) donor governments and agencies.