Category: Uncategorized

LAHORE: The World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan (WWF) on Monday announced winners of the nature carnival that was held on Sunday.

Students of Roots School System (RSS), Model Town were declared winners of the WWF Nature Carnival 2012 for the second year in a row. Rootsians displayed a ground-breaking and inventive project on the theme ‘Habitat Conservation of Endangered Species – Snow Leopard, Dolphin, Green Turtle’, showing the significance of conservation, protection, restoration, and management of fish, wildlife, and native plants. The project also outlined the methods of preservation and restoration of ecosystems.

A panel of judges, including experts on conservation and wildlife, avowed the winners. RSS ED Walid Mushtaq congratulated the winners and RSS management for the triumph and appreciated the steps taken by WWF.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012%5C02%5C21%5Cstory_21-2-2012_pg13_3

Flowers will continue to bloom in the world heritage site Valley of Flowers in Uttarakhand as the National Green Tribunal has stayed work on a controversial power project in buffer zone of the Valley that was approved by the environment ministry.

The tribunal this week stayed the approval given by the ministry to GMR Energy for cutting down trees in 60 hectare of forest land in the ecologically sensitive area for construction of the 300 MW Alaknanda-Badrinath hydroelectric project. The tribunal ordered no trees on the forest land proposed to be diverted shall be felled without its prior permission.

With this directive, work on the project could come to a halt for all practical reasons because the Supreme Court had earlier observed that work on non-forest lands of any project can’t be taken up if work on forest lands is held up due to some reason.

The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) had denied clearance to the project twice in 2011 on grounds of adverse effects on the region’s ecology and wildlife. However, environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan overruled FAC and gave go-ahead to GMR last November. Subsequently, green groups challenged the clearance in the tribunal.

The power project falls in the buffer zone of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, which extends over two national parks-Nanda Devi and Valley of Flowers-listed as World Heritage Sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.

The region serves as a corridor for movement of snow leopard, brown bear and other wild species.

The FAC had observed that existing disturbance in the region such as pilgrim movements during summer, road construction and work on Vishnuprayag hydroelectric project had already seriously threatened ‘outstanding universal values’ of the Valley of Flowers. In order to preserve these values, the state government had declared a buffer zone which is also required to be conserved as the integrity of Valley depends on the zone.

Among wild habitats, the most affected would be the habitat of the snow leopard, an endangered species. Snow leopards require large and contiguous landscape and any fragmentation of their habitat poses a danger to their survival. The ministry’s own Project Snow Leopard suggests landscape approach to conservation of the species.

“Developmental projects in roads, barrages and hydel may have limited impact on large mammals on their own, but the process of building these structures can be more damaging. Blasting, movement of labour and vehicles can cause irreparable harm by disturbing habitat,” observed Yash Veer Bhatnagar, director, Snow Leopard Trust-India.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/power-project-in-uttarakhand-hits-green-tribunal-hurdle/1/174241.html

(Reuters) – The elusive, endangered snow leopard is apparently thriving in a park in Bhutan, as seen in camera trap images released on Tuesday by the government of Bhutan and World Wildlife Fund.

Over 10,000 pictures of the snow leopards were captured last October and November by four cameras placed in Wangchuck Centennial Park as part of a survey conducted by Bhutan and WWF.

Unaware of the camera, one animal walks up to the lens, while an adult female and a young snow leopard pace a few steps away. Another image shows an adult feline nearly invisible against a stony Himalayan background.

Most significantly, a video clip shows one adult leopard scent-marking its territory, a way to communicate with other snow leopards about gender and breeding status. It also can show there is a resident animal, not one that is just passing through.

That is important, because the snow leopard is threatened by retaliatory killings by herders, habitat lost to farmers and poaching for their spotted pelts. There are an estimated 4,500 to 7,500 in the wild.

The camera trap evidence shows core snow leopard habitat in Wangchuck Centennial Park, which functions as a corridor between Jigme Dorji National Park to the west and Bumdeling Wildlife Sanctuary in the east. The survey is meant to figure out how many snow leopards are in Wangchuck park and where they are, in order to target the best places for conservation.

Listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, snow leopard populations are suspected to have declined by at least 20 percent in the last 16 years due to habitat loss and the loss of prey.

Their habitat — above the tree line but below the snow line — is a narrow band that is expected to get narrower due to climate change, survey leader Rinjan Shrestha said in a telephone interview.

As trees are able to grow at higher altitudes, snow leopards may be pushed further uphill, but could be constrained by limited oxygen at high altitude.

Warming at high elevations in the Himalayas is occurring at three times the global average. If climate-warming greenhouse emissions continue at a low level, 10 percent of snow leopard habitat could be lost, WWF said.

Under a high emissions scenario, about 30 percent of habitat could be vulnerable, Shrestha said.

“Its habitat is relatively narrow in Bhutan compared to other parts of its terrain,” Shrestha said from Toronto. “That’s why I was not sure we could see many in Bhutan.”

The cameras also showed a healthy population of blue sheep, the snow leopard’s main prey.

(Reporting By Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Sandra Maler)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/12/MNU11MQII3.DTL&type=science&ao=2

Rodney Jackson on a mission to save the snow leopard

Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer, SFgate.com

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Biologist Rodney Jackson can pinpoint the moment he transformed from a student of nature to a full-blown conservationist.

While walking along a river in Nepal in 1977, he came upon the skinned carcass of a snow leopard, its front paws curved inward as if in agony, its tail arching skyward like a question mark.

He no longer wanted to simply take wildlife pictures of the endangered Himalayan cat. He knew he would dedicate the rest of his life to saving it.

Jackson photographed the gruesome find, then tracked down the hunter who had killed the animal with a poison spear. He paid $15 for the ice-gray pelt with black rosettes and presented it to Nepalese officials to prove poachers were killing the snow leopard despite international bans.

“I originally went to Nepal after I saw the first pictures of a snow leopard in National Geographic,” said Jackson, 67. “It was such a majestic animal, I needed to see one. And I thought I could take a better picture. I left Nepal with an entirely different idea of what I needed to do.”
World expert

Today, Jackson is one of the world’s foremost experts on the elusive snow leopard, an almost invisible animal that lives on some of the world’s highest peaks in Nepal, Pakistan, India, Siberia, Mongolia and Tibet. One of the hardest animals to count, its population estimate is rough: approximately 4,000 to 7,500 snow leopards spread out over half a million square miles of inhospitable habitat.

Along with his companion, Darla Hillard, Jackson runs the Snow Leopard Conservancy from their modest Sonoma home, a shaded retreat decorated with Tibetan art and prayer flags and lorded over by a 17-year-old house cat named Smudge. They share an office behind the house with two desks, two computers and stacks of research files and books reaching to the ceiling.

With no children in tow, they have been able to maintain the same schedule for the past 30 years: About six months a year in Sonoma, and the rest at dangerous altitudes in subzero temperatures.

“Governments can’t do this conservation work alone,” Jackson said. “I’m convinced guardianship by local communities is the way to go.”
3-time finalist

For the third time, Jackson is a finalist for the prestigious Indianapolis Prize, a $100,000 award given every other September to a conservationist dedicated to a single animal species. Otherwise known as the Nobel Prize for conservation, it’s the world’s leading conservation prize, reserved for those who can demonstrate a species is more likely to be sustained because of their direct actions.

“Definitely the snow leopard is alive today because Rodney is on the job,” said Michael Crowther, president of the Indianapolis Zoological Society, which administers the prize. “There are people who raise money and donate work for the cause, but no one is in his league. He lives a life most people have probably never heard of.”

Shortly after they met, Jackson and Hillard were the first to radio-collar snow leopards, tracking their movements with a VHF antenna and earphones on the peaks of Nepal from 1981 to 1984. With the help of hidden film cameras that were triggered by snow leopards stepping on a buried sensor, the couple obtained unprecedented data on the animal’s movements and behavior.

During that time, Jackson and Hillard learned that snow leopards are largely solitary and leave scrapes in the dirt or urinate on rocks to avoid one another while passing through the same territory.

“They make a large kill every 15 to 20 days – mostly blue sheep,” he said.

But sometimes, when their prey is scarce, snow leopards enter rural mountain villages and kill livestock. When Jackson started his work in the ’70s, he met many high-altitude herders who considered the endangered snow leopard a pest worth killing.
B & B program

Now, the Snow Leopard Conservancy supplies wire mesh to enclose the herders’ pens and keep snow leopards out. The conservancy also created a bed and breakfast program in India, where trekkers pay $12 a night to stay with a local family and eat home-cooked meals. They also pay local guides to take them into the mountains to see snow leopards.

“The villages are starting to see that the snow leopard draws the tourists, so it is more valuable to them alive than dead,” said Jackson, who estimates that five snow leopards are saved for every pen that’s fitted with protective mesh.

Wildlife biologist Jerry Roe of Martinez, who accompanied Jackson on several snow leopard research trips to India from 2002 to 2004, said: “Rodney has a way of connecting with people. Like the wolf is here, the snow leopard is a loaded animal, but Rodney can talk to people in a nonthreatening way. He’s not the Westerner coming in telling people how to live their lives.”

In a sense, Jackson is doing the same thing he loved to do as a boy in South Africa, following animal tracks after school. His father, a member of the British Royal Air Force, met and married his mother in South Africa. He lived in a thatched house with no plumbing, and entertained himself by hiding in the tall grass to watch antelope and leopards. He once found a nest of guinea fowl eggs and excitedly brought it home, only to have the eggs go putrid and explode.
‘Explorers in Africa’

“It all started with this library book, ‘Explorers in Africa.’ I was 10, and fascinated by the big game hunter in the book. My parents never went camping, but as soon as I got a car, I was off,” he said.

Jackson studied zoology at the British-run University of Zimbabwe. Upon graduation, he got a job mapping wildlife for the Canadian government. After writing several letters to his hero, UC Berkeley Professor Aldo Starker Leopold, Jackson was finally admitted to Starker’s zoology and conservation master’s program in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

For his thesis, he put radio collars on male fawns in south Texas to discover why a disproportionate number of male versus female fawns were falling prey to coyotes. (Answer: Males were more apt to hold their ground than flee.)

Jackson had originally planned to return from Berkeley to South Africa to study traditional lowland leopards. But then a woman knocked on his door.

Hillard, who quit her mind-numbing planning job with an idea to do environmental work, met Jackson in the late 1970s when she showed up at the Bodega Bay Institute, where Jackson led environmental hikes. He told her he didn’t have any jobs available, but he could use her help applying for a grant to study snow leopards in Nepal. He’d been turned down by countless other funders who told him it was impossible to radio-collar a Himalayan snow leopard.

She helped him apply and win the Rolex Award for Enterprise, and he invited her on that pioneering radio-collar trip to Nepal. They had to hike 12 days up a snowy mountain to set up their research camp. Hillard took many of the photos – including one in which Jackson and a Sherpa try to sedate a snarling snow leopard – that wound up in a 1986 story in National Geographic.

With changes in technology, Jackson no longer has to use film cameras or bury pressure pads underground and hope a snow leopard steps on it facing the camera to get a good shot. In Ladakh, India, he worked with a PBS film crew to set up 40 infrared, heat and motion sensing cameras that shoot video as well as stills. They got the first images of snow leopards hunting, marking rocks, mating and footage of a mother with her cubs. In one video, a cat gets so close, its breath fogs the lens. The footage became part of the Nature documentary “Silent Roar: Searching for the Snow Leopard.”

Today, Jackson is researching less-invasive methods of studying the snow leopard.

“We are now, in essence, poop collectors,” he said.

He has 500 scats collected so far from Mongolia, India and Nepal, and is working with geneticists overseas and at Texas A&M University. By analyzing waste, researchers can determine the gender, age and individual markers for the animal who left it – which can lead them to know which animals are related and get a much more accurate count of the snow leopard population.

He’s also collecting hair – by leaving out pieces of carpet with dull prongs and few squirts of Calvin Klein Obsession cologne and waiting for the animal to rub on it.

“They go crazy for the stuff,” he said. By analyzing the keratin, he can find out what the snow leopards have been eating in the previous months. He wants to know how much livestock versus prey they consume to determine what effect the predator-proof corrals are having.
Snow Leopard Scouts

Hillard and Jackson are also teaching Himalayan youngsters in a new Snow Leopard Scouts program how to camouflage digital cameras themselves and e-mail their photos to Sonoma. As the children become more excited about the images they capture, Jackson hopes to turn them into a generation of snow leopard guardians.

When he’s in Sonoma, Jackson keeps abreast of snow leopard movements from GPS coordinates sent from the cats’ collars to his inbox. He also tests new cameras in the hills behind his home, capturing images of mountain lions for practice.
Coming back

Recently, he drove his car with the UNCIA personalized plate (scientific name for snow leopard) onto a private organic farm in Glen Ellen, where he has permission to set up hidden wildlife cameras. A half hour’s hike uphill brought him to three different cameras, camouflaged in hard cases and secured by bungee cords to branches or hidden in piles of rocks. Checking the digital card, he found plenty of squirrels, dog walkers, deer and skunk, but there were no big cats on the memory card.

Jackson is used to missing the shot. In the first 15 years of his career, he’d seen only a handful of snow leopards in the wild. He’s come to think of the snow leopard as a gentle ghost, blending in to the beauty and quiet of the landscape.

“It’s almost as if the snow leopard has been imbued by the Buddhist culture it lives in,” Jackson said.

Yet that’s starting to change. Snow leopards were declared vanished from Mount Everest in the mid-1970s but began reappearing in 2003. Since then, he’s seen at least 25.

“They’re coming back,” he said.

http://www.dawn.com/2012/01/27/snow-leopard-reemerges-in-chitral-forests.html

CHITRAL, Jan 26: Snow leopard was spotted in the forests near Bakamak and Shali villages in Chitral district on Wednesday and Thursday after long disappearance.

An official of the local wildlife department told Dawn on Thursday that the big cat appeared near Bakamak and Shali areas but heavy snowfall forced it into moving to Toshi game reserve at lower altitude.

He said snow leopard hadn’t been seen in the area over the last two years amidst fears about its extinction.

People thronged the Garam Chashma Road to catch a glimpse of the leopard.

The wildlife department official said the big cat descended to the areas of low altitudes in search of food after heavy snow in forests and high mountains and that small animals, including markhor and ibex, were its cherished food.

People fear attacks on them and their livestock by the big cat, especially at nighttime.

Ejaz Ahmad, a biodiversity specialist, said snow leopard lived in areas alongside Hindu Kush range of mountains.

He said leopard was declared an endangered specie in the recent past but its population density later surged satisfactorily.

Mr Ejaz said massive grazing in alpine rangeland, human conflicts, climatic change and decline in snowfall had led to reduction in the number of leopards. He said WWF had launched a snow leopard welfare project in some Chitral villages.

Meanwhile, Dinar Shah, in his eighties and from Seen village, said previously, people used to guard their families and livestock at nighttime but installation of bulbs around the village had curtailed leopard attacks.

He said leopard’s attacks on people were very rare as it targeted livestock, especially goats, only. He said the former Chitral rulers banned leopard killing but lifted the ban in view of growing cases of its attacks on livestock.

Some regretted that leopard was poached in the area for skin, which had a great demand in national and international market, without let or hindrance. They demanded registration of cases against leopard poachers.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\01\23\story_23-1-2012_pg7_10

KARACHI: As many as 2,500 people from various spheres of life, including schools, colleges and universities students, participated in annual Travelling Nature Carnival held here at PAF Museum Sunday, organised by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)-Pakistan in collaboration with Indus Motor Company (IMC).

The carnival was aimed at motivating and involving youth and general public in valuing the rich natural heritage of Pakistan, and supporting conservation initiatives.

Among its several engaging activities, the most innovative was the 3D display model competition. Hundreds of students participated in live presentations to the judges and guests, featuring themes such as habitat conservation of endangered species (snow leopard, green turtle, Indus dolphin), water conservation, a green idea, solid waste management (recycle, reuse, reduce), global warming and climate change, ecotourism, energy conservation, and green architecture.

The winning institutes were bestowed with shields and certificates. There were 150 stalls set up by schools, universities and commercial entities.

The carnival also arranged environment puppet show, live musical performance, magic show, environment games and quizzes, nature art exhibition, theatre, and environment debate competition.

Speaking on the occasion, WWF-Pakistan’s Regional Director Rab Nawaz pointed out that through the carnival environmental messages could be conveyed to the large number of audience. He further said that children are the stewards for change; they should be equipped with conservation practices, he urged.

Senior Manager Corporate Relation, WWF Pakistan Marriyum Aurangzeb said that for past 10 years, WWF Pakistan’s nature carnival had been playing its role as a unique endeavour that brought together thousands of visitors, such as students, families, corporate sector, media, government organisations, conservation organisations and general public. It provides a collective platform for building knowledge and interest in responsible action, ecologically conscious development and sustainable living.

MD IMC Pervaiz Ghias was the guest of honour at the carnival. While speaking to the participants, he said that the Toyota environmental programme launched in 2011, in partnership with WWF-Pakistan, being implemented in 100 schools, 15 colleges and 10 universities, was a great success.

IMC is proud to be a part of the carnival and hopes to make the young generation of Pakistan an environmentally sensitive generation and a guardian of our natural resources.

Programme Coordinator Indus for All Programme Nasir Ali Panhwar stressed on the unique nature of carnival in terms of establishing diverse level of participation and an integrated approach towards nature conservation. He highlighted need of creating awareness about environmental issues with support of media.

Congratulations to all the SLN members involved in this project!

Telegraph.co.uk – A British-lead team of scientists has snapped rare intimate photographs of the elusive snow leopard on a remote mountain on the Tajik-Afghan border.

The photographs of the five snow leopards over a two month period in former Soviet Tajikistan suggest that the scientists may have discovered a hotspot for the endangered cat.

Dr Alex Diment, a scientist with Cambridge-based conservationist group Fauna and Flora International, was the expedition manager on the team of 25 people.

He described how they set up camera traps triggered by motion sensors along the side of an untouched valley for two weeks in August.

“We went up into the Wakhan range which is a mountain range on the border with Afghanistan,” Dr Diment said. “We’re pretty sure that it has never been surveyed for bio-diversity in that region.”

Snow leopards are so agile and so elusive that it is impossible for humans to physically track them.

Also in the group was Dr David Mallon, a snow leopard expert who is attached to Manchester Metropolitan University and is chairman of the Snow Leopard Network, a group dedicated to conserving the snow leopard.

Ten other scientists were Tajiks and the rest of the team were support staff.

The group returned to the valley two months later to collect their cameras and inspect the photographs.

“It was really surprising to have so many individuals,” he said of the snow leopards in the photographs. “I thought we might get one or two but to get five individuals in a small area, including a family with cubs was a great surprise. It was very exciting.”

The spotted pattern on the snow leopards’ white, grey body is unique to each cat, meaning they can be individually identified.

There are only an estimated 3,000 to 8,000 snow leopards left in the world. The wide estimate demonstrates the snow leopards’ elusiveness.

They typically live above an altitude of 4,000m on remote craggy mountains in Central Asia, China and Afghanistan. Trapping for their coats and a drop in prey have hit the snow leopard and driven them to the edge of extinction.

Photographs of the two cubs show them inspecting the cameras before they became so curious that they actually took one of the cameras away.

“We came back and we were missing a camera but had no idea what could have happened to it,” Dr Diment said.

The team searched without success and it wasn’t until they returned to the nearest city and looked at the memory card of another camera that they discovered the truth.

“There was the culprit stealing the camera,” he said. “They stole one of the cameras but the paired camera pointing at the other one showed them nicking it.”

Snow leopards retain a mystical allure in Central Asia and are depicted on the emblems of cities and organisations across the region. Almaty, Central Asia’s financial capital, and Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, both have snow leopards on their emblems.

In the Soviet Union, mountaineers who climbed all five peaks over the 7,000 metres were given the Snow Leopard Award.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/tajikistan/9025294/Scientists-snap-rare-photos-of-snow-leopards-in-Tajikistan.html

Voting for the 2012-2014 Snow Leopard Network Steering Committee was recently concluded.

Thank you to all members who voted, and congratulations to the newly elected Steering Committee members, who are as follows:

Chair:
David Mallon, Ph.D., Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

Members:
Yash Veer Bhatnagar, Ph.D., Nature Conservation Foundation and Snow Leopard Trust (India Program)

Mukesh Chalise, Ph.D., Tribhuvan University, Nepal

Ahmad Khan, WWF Pakistan/Pakistan Wetlands Programme

Sibylle Noras, Snow Leopard Blog, Australia

Jennifer Snell Rullman, Snow Leopard Trust, USA

Dajun Wang, Ph.D., Peking University and Shanshui Conservation Centre, China

Already many National Parks across India have been honoured to have their names in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. Now joining them soon will be the Great Himalayan National Park located in Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh.

The nomination for the prestigious status for the National Park had been sent by the Himachal Pradesh state’s wildlife and forest department to UNESCO and the same has been accepted.

The National Park will be honoured with the title next year after its evaluation by a team of international wildlife experts from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (“ICUN”).

The topography of the Great Himalayan National Park is made up of alpine and coniferous forest, emerald pastures, snow capped peaks, steep valleys and a number of waterfalls and small streams that continue to flow throughout the year. Located at an altitude of 1500 to 6000 mm the National Park is spread over 1,171 sq kms. The park has one of the richest biodiversities in the Western Himalayas and a variety of flora, fauna and avian species can be spotted here.

The park remains snow covered for most part of the year. However here one can spot some of the many rare and endangered species such as wild mountain goats like the bharal, goral and serow, the brown bear, leopards and the elusive snow leopard, rare Nilgiri Tahr and red fox among many others. The Great Himalayan National Park also houses a large number of bird species like Monal, Koklass and Western Tragopan. Trekking in these Himalayan mountains is the best way to spot this exotic wildlife

In addition to accepting the nomination of the Great Himalayan National Park as a World Heritage Site, the nominations of three other parks and sanctuaries have also been accepted by UNESCO- the Bhitarkanika National Park in Orissa, home to the largest population of giant salt water crocodiles in Asia, the Neora Valley National Park in West Bengal and the Desert National Park located in Jaisalmer in Thar Desert in Rajasthan. One can spot here the Great Indian Bustard, a magnificent but endangered bird species and a number of fossils, both plants and animals which date as old as 180 million years.

Some of the famous National Parks in India that are already listed on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list are Kaziranga National Park and Manas National Park in Assam, Keoladeo Ghana National Park in Rajasthan, Sunderban National Park in West Bengal and Nanda Devi National Park and Valley of Flowers National Park in Uttarakhand.

The Himachal Pradesh state government in addition to making a successful impact in the World Heritage list nominations has many other projects stated to benefit the wildlife.

The Himalayan Snow Leopard Research Centre would soon be developed near Kibbar village of Spiti valley at a cost of Rs. 5.15 crore to preserve this wild life species in their natural habitat and carry research and development programme over the same time.

The state government will also shortly start a breeding programme of the Himalayan monal, a pheasant species, near Manali. The Conservation Breeding Phesantry for Himalayan Monal will be developed near Manali by spending Rs. 2 crore in the first phase.

http://www.rang7.com/news/national-park/unesco-accepts-world-heritage-site-nomination-for-great-himalayan-national-park-993.htm

The Snow Leopard Conservation Grants Program (SLCGP) will be funding five projects in 2012.

This year, thanks largely to the generosity of our important partner the Whitley Fund for Nature (www.whitleyaward.org), we are able to provide an unprecedented level of support for snow leopards since the inception of SLCGP. This is a 60 % improvement over last year.

SLN is also grateful to the Snow Leopard Conservancy (www.snowleopardconservancy.org) for continuing their support, and to the Snow Leopard Trust (www.snowleopard.org) for giving even more than in earlier years.

The selected projects are:
– Flagship Species of the Pamir Range, Pakistan: Exploring Status and Conservation Hotspots (Jaffar Ud Din and Muhammad Ali Nawaz: Pakistan)

– Snow leopard toolkits for monastic leaders in Bhutan (Susan Higgins, Nawang Auden, Broughton Coburn: US, Bhutan)

– Re-assessment of livestock depredation by snow leopard in the Phu Valley of Manang after 17 years (Ashish Adhikari: Nepal)

– Snow leopard (Panthera uncia) response to habitat, prey and anthropogenic factors at multiple spatial scales in a multi-use landscape (Rishi Kumar Sharma: India)

– Assessing the distribution, status and conservation needs of snow leopard in a natural World Heritage in Sichuan, China (Wei Liu: US, China)

A review panel of 16 experts contributed their time and effort in helping select the applicants.
Further details of the selected projects and the review panel will shortly be posted on our website, https://snowleopardnetwork.org.