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Congratulations to Yash Veer for publishing this piece in the Tehelka.

The future of biodiversity in the higher Himalayas lies outside protected areas

The northern part of India is rimmed by a 2,500 km stretch of mountains, the Himalayas, the land of snow. Covering over a million sq km, it includes low Siwalik foothills at 400 m, through the Middle Himalayas, to massive peaks above 8,000 m, going further in its rainshadow into the Trans Himalayas.

Usually, rainfall declines from east to west and from south to the northern Trans Himalayan cold-deserts, causing an immense vertical and horizontal diversity of habitats. The non-forested areas above 3,200 m in the west and 4,200 m in the east cover over 1.5 lakh sq km. About 45 percent of this high altitude area is a vast expanse of permafrost, glaciers and sheer rock faces, largely uninhabitable.

The Himalayas host unique biodiversity including at least 350 species of mammals, 1,200 species of birds, 635 species of amphibians and reptiles and numerous plants. Over 335 species of wild relatives of cultivated crops are found here. The higher Himalayas also have the highest diversity of wild relatives of domestic animals — sheep (urial, argali), goats (markhor, ibex), cattle (yak) and equids (kiang). There are numerous biologically important wetlands that form breeding grounds for waterfowl.

Only a part of this region’s biodiversity is covered by more than 30 wildlife Protected Areas (PA) that dot the higher Himalayas. Unlike the rest of the country, where most biodiversity are locked in habitat ‘islands’ formed by PAs, here it is spread continuously in the entire region. For example, it is estimated that over 60 percent of the snow leopard population, a flagship of this ecosystem, may be outside PAs. The same is true for other species such as Ladakh urial, Tibetan argali and takin, of which less than 1,500 may survive in India.

While wildlife values are pervasive in the landscape, so is the use by the resident agro-pastoral communities who use the mountains for pasture, some cultivation, collection of biomass and medicinal plants. With increasing human population, the growing people and wildlife interface is probably posing greater problems. Wild herbivores in places have been out-competed by increasing domestic stock, while in other regions poaching and conflict are decimating wildlife. With the recent thrust of developmental pressures, primarily to match up with the tremendous infrastructural boom on the Chinese side, there is a great risk of prime areas getting overrun by such

One offshoot of the recent thrust of development is the huge influx of poor migrant labourers. Many of them are alleged to be involved with poaching and illegal wildlife trade. Garbage from many labour campsites, military camps and tourist facilities has resulted in an explosion of feral dog population that threatens local wildlife, including

Realising that traditional conservation approaches may not be effective in these areas, the MoEF, in collaboration with the Himalayan states, NGOs and communities, developed an alternative strategy in 2009. Project Snow Leopard is a landscape and knowledge based conservation programme that doesn’t limit itself to the PAs and utilises recent lessons from participatory work to achieve holistic ecosystem conservation. Finally, we are moving in the right direction but, given the challenges, it

Bhatnagar is a biologist working in the Higher Himalayas and director, Snow Leopard Trust-India.

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main52.asp?filename=Ne090612Yash_Veer.asp

May 25, 2012

Union minister of state for forests Jayanthi Natarajan on Wednesday announced a recovery programme for saving critically endangered species and their habitats.

Under the initiative, 16 species have been identified for support. This includes snow leopard, bustards (including floricans), dolphin, hangul, Nilgiri tahr, marine turtles, dugongs and coral reefs, edible nest swiftlet, Asian wild buffalo, Nicobar megapode, Manipur brow-antlered deer, vultures, Malabar civet, Indian rhinoceros, asiatic lion, swamp deer and jerdon’s courser.

Reacting to queries related to conservation of species that are on the verge of extinction, the minister informed Rajya Sabha that financial and technical assistance is extended to the state governments under various Centrally-sponsored schemes.

Under CSS projects ‘Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats’, ‘Project Tiger’ and ‘Project Elephant’ are mooted to ensure better protection and conservation to wildlife.

Besides, CBI has been empowered under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 to apprehend and prosecute wildlife offenders.

A Wildlife Crime Control Bureau has also been set up for control of poaching and illegal trade in wildlife and its products, she said.

Meanwhile, wildlife activists welcomed the Union minister’s announcement. “Tamil Nadu was once a home for large number of vultures and Nilgiri Tahr.

The state should utilise the opportunity to conserve the Nilgiri Tahr, which is our state animal,” said Mr K.V.R.K. Thirunaranan, founder, The Nature Trust.

Ms Jayanthi Natarajan also added that the state governments have been requested to strengthen the patrolling in and around the protected areas and national parks.

Source: Deccan Chronicle

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/nation/south/central-plan-save-endangered-species-607

Congratulations to Yash Veer in publishing this piece in the Deccan Herald.

May 22, 2012:

Yash Veer Bhatnagar charts out the efforts of The Snow Leopard Trust and other organisations in unravelling the mysteries of the elusive snow cat.

‘Stones of Silence’, a classic by the renowned naturalist George Schaller changed me forever. I knew that I wanted to work in the high Himalaya and study the ‘mountain monarchs’, the herbivores of the high mountains.

Sighting the snow leopard appeared far-fetched, as Schaller’s travels over several hundred kilometres had just yielded one or two sightings. He called it the grey ghost of the Himalaya… Little did I know 20 years ago that snow leopard conservation would be my main job!

Snow leopards are medium-sized cats and since they don’t roar, they weren’t clubbed with the other large cats, but given a genus of their own, Uncia. Recent genetic studies place them closer to the tiger than the leopard, and taxonomists have renamed them Panthera uncia.

Overall, the range of snow leopards spans an estimated 1.3 lakh sq. km in India, which is about six per cent of the global range. The Indian territory, however, is estimated to house about 10 per cent of the global population.

Since the mid 1980s, some studies by the Snow Leopard Trust (SLT), Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and other organisations have tried to unravel the mysteries of this elusive cat. However, these initial investigations couldn’t yield much on the species, except some useful tools to monitor them – counting signs along landform edges, marking posts of the snow leopard. It is with the advent of camera trapping that some hope emerged to get a clearer picture of the species’ abundance.

Around the same time, the emergence of satellite and GPS based telemetry to track wildlife species emerged, making it possible to study and understand the movements and resource use of such species. Further, using nuclear DNA that it amplified from scats (faeces) of snow leopards, it is now possible to trace it to the individual, thus enabling population estimates over large landscapes too.

Since the past two decades, researchers from the Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore (NCF), SLT and the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore have been involved with studies to understand the species, its prey, human society and threats using both traditional and advanced tools and have been rewarded with some amazing insights on the species.

Snow leopards & their prey

A key revelation was about the occurrences of the snow leopard and its prey. We realised that the entire potential area of snow leopards, from the treeline of the Greater Himalaya to the Trans Himalaya, from east to west, appeared to be occupied by the snow leopard. This region is thus very different from the rest of the forested tracts of the country where wildlife, especially endangered ones, are limited to protected areas (PA) alone. Protected areas in the rest of the country appear to be habitat ‘islands’ in a maze of human dominated landscape, but in the snow leopard areas there may be some valleys better than others, but the habitat appears to be contiguous.

Human use also appears to be pervasive, with the pastoral and agro-pastoral people depending on remote corners of the area for their needs. Human-induced barriers seem to be non-existent in the landscape. We realised that the PAs here, about 31 of them, cover substantial area, but still leave out many areas where good wildlife occurs.

People in much of the range rear livestock and have traded in their products such as meat, wool and cashmere. Due to changes since Independence and a move towards a market economy, these have often resulted in increased numbers of livestock.

Such areas have been overgrazed and degraded, resulting in severe competition with native herbivores resulting in a decline in their populations and even local extinction in some cases. Often this process is linked with increased dependence of snow leopard and other wild carnivores on livestock. The economic losses to people can be severe and can lead to retaliatory killing of the carnivores.

Development, but for whom?

Fortunately, the snow leopard in India shares most of its habitat with Buddhist communities who are usually more tolerant, but there are other parts where wildlife have been hunted and these include parts of Arunachal, Uttarakhand, Kinnaur, Lahaul, and much of J&K, except Ladakh.

A recent and probably more disturbing trend is with development pressures. In the past decade, the border areas are being integrated into the mainstream with better roads, construction work, hydel projects and other infrastructure. Much of this is certainly needed, but with not much manpower available locally, poor migrant labourers from the Indian plains and Nepal are brought in large numbers by contractors and local people. Many of them hunt and collect rare medicinal plants, with serious consequences for conservation.

Tourism is growing in the region and there are some negative impacts from this too. Another recent threat due to increased population of outsiders and the mushrooming tourist facilities is the invasion of an alien predator – the domestic dog.

Traditionally, pastoralists in the region had few, if any dogs, but with the easy availability of garbage and livestock carcasses near villages, feral dog populations have exploded. They are known to attack and kill livestock, pose a threat to humans too, but recently have been seen moving out into the mountains killing wild ungulates and even evicting the snow leopard from their kill.

With such large scale changes taking place in a landscape where snow leopard and its prey occurs almost everywhere, we felt that confining conservation attention to PAs alone is not the best strategy.

We discussed these issues with the forest departments of the five Himalayan states, other expert organisations and the local community through formal consultations and sensed that the conservation scenario was rather bleak and was compounded by limited funds and staff with the forest departments. In Ladakh and Spiti, for example, the ratio of a frontline forest staff to the area he was supposed to take care of, was over 600 sq.km! Most PAs didn’t have management plans and conservation was often ad-hoc.

The big picture

By this time, agencies like NCF-SLT and Snow Leopard Conservancy had been trying out many incentive based conservation programmes to mitigate conflicts and augment local incomes.

Based on the species occurrences and these conservation experiments, we realised that there was a need to restructure conservation of snow leopard and its habitat with a focus away from PAs alone, but in the larger landscape, where we have a landscape vision, but local solutions to threats. These consultations, earlier experiments in the country with participatory conservation and the active involvement of the Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF) led to the development of an alternative approach to conservation of the Indian high altitudes, called the Project Snow Leopard (PSL), in 2009.

Under the PSL, it is proposed that each of the five states should identify a large landscape that’s up to 4,000 sq.km. They should then understand species distribution within these areas accurately to identify a mosaic of small ‘core landscape units’, basically areas that have comparatively better wildlife values.

A management plan should be commissioned involving expert scientific organisations and simultaneously structures should be set up in the state to facilitate better participation. It is stressed that many local institutions may already be involved with environment friendly activities such as harnessing renewable energy, awareness camps, green income options and improving capacity.

The management plan hopes to incorporate these areas of ‘convergence’ so that there is a larger buy-in into the conservation process and scarce conservation funds are better used for protection, tackling threats, building capacity and other core activities.

Many agencies apart from NCF-SLT and SLC, such as the Worldwide Fund for Nature, WII and the state governments are taking keen interest in these remote and difficult areas. More and more credible information on snow leopard is now available. Much still needs to be done, but with the new information and approaches, snow leopards look secure in India.

(The writer is Senior Scientist, NCF, Mysore and Director, Snow Leopard Trust-India.)

Source: Deccan Herald

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/251112/on-trail-snow-phantoms.html

Snow Leopard Network member Evgeniy Kashkarov recently distributed an article on his recent findings of snow  leopards in two areas, based on unusual migration patterns. The first area is Tofalaria – the northern abrupt edge of Central Sayan Mountains on 540 N latitude  (intersection of Western and Eastern Sayan Mountains), and the second one is Chukotka – abrupt edge of Asia, bordering Alaska on latitude of the Arctic Circle.

Text of the article is as follows:

Dear Snow Leopard Friends,

I would like to introduce you two news, related to snow leopard discoveries in most marginal areas, we could ever imagine. First area is Tofalaria – the northern abrupt edge of Central Sayan Mountains on 540 N latitude  (intersection of Western and Eastern Sayan Mountains), and the second one is Chukotka – abrupt edge of Asia, bordering Alaska on latitude of the Polar Circle (maps 1-3).

Map 1. Tofalaria-Touva-Buryatia snow leopard expedition, March-April 2012.
Legend: dotted line – expedition route; A (Chelo-Mongo River), B (Upper Honda River), C (Lower Honda River) – areas, where the snow leopards were killed by musk deer snares in February 2012 (two individuals), and one individual approximately five years ago; 1 (Big Murkhoi River, Tofalaria) and 2 (Zhombolok River, Buryatia) – areas, where the snow leopard footprints were observed at expedition time. Note: all mountains on represented map of Buryatia have stable core of the snow leopard population. It was confirmed by results of our field research in 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2010, and 2012. Into bordering territory of Mongolia (Western Hovsgool Mountains) the snow leopard migrates from Buryatia, but in summer only. General distance of migrations is equal to sixty kilometers from Buryatia border  (this is data from our survey in 1995, 1997).

Map 2. Location of the snow leopard discovery in Chukotka-Kamchatka area.
Legend: circled areas show the cores, and squared – periphery of the snow leopard observations

DISCOVERIES OF THE SNOW LEOPARD IN MOST MARGINAL AREAS IN THE NORTH

Tofalaria
It is sable, reindeer and snow leopard country. But until February 2012 no one scientist could prove the snow leopard existence here. Tofalaria was known for most northern population of Ibex, but not for the snow leopard. In February 2012 two snow leopards were killed by musk deer snares and sold by hunters to merchant from Nizhne-Udinsk – the nearest big city in 280 kilometers from Tofalaria capital – Upper Gutara village (see map 1). Then snow leopard skins were tried to sale via Internet and attracted attention of Irkutsk region (Tofalaria included in this area) and Buryatia administrations, police, hunting inspection, and court. I met this news in Nizhne-Udinsk in March, when already came there for expedition. For years after my discovery of the snow leopard in 1990s in Eastern Sayan and Western Hovsgool Mountains (see bibliography), populated by Ibex, I was sure, the snow leopard must inhabit the similar territories in Tofalaria. It was simply most remote and hardly accessible area, and for this reason no one zoologists has been look for the snow leopard. In March-April 2012 we covered with my partner Pavel Alexandrov around 600 kilometers between Upper Gutara, Alygdzher and Orlik villages in Tofalaria-Touva-Buryatia (map 1). I would like to take whole picture of this territory, collect field data and answer the question: has Tofalaria resident population of the snow leopard or that species migrates to Tofalaria from Touva-Buryaia? The nearest to Tofalaria snow leopard core, known to me, was the basin of Zhombolok River in Buryatia (its location is near figure 2 on the map 1). In 1995 we discovered there the good size snow leopard population also with Pavel Alexandrov (see bibliography). Complete information about results of our expedition will be published in next issue of the Rhythm Journal http://www.rhythmjournal.com.

Map 3. Data of Rodion Sivilobov of snow leopard presence in Chukotka-Kamchatka range.
Legend: 1-poached, 1979; 2 – visual observation, 1987; 3 – found dead, 1974; 4 – footprints in summer, 2009; 5 – visual observation, 1962; 6 – poached, 1991; 8 – footprints in winter, 1982 and 2010; 9 – visual observation, 1982.

Chukotka
News about discovery of the snow leopard in Chukotka (map 2, 3) I got in February 2012 from crypto zoologist Rodion Sivolobov. For long time he looked there for the cave bear, survived from Pleistocene, and occasionally collected all information, linked to unusual big cat known between hunters, fishers, and geologists… From 1960s big cats and their footprints were observed in area from Northern Kamchatka to Chukotka (map 3). Because Rodion was not sure at first what kind cat inhabits his study area, he called it the Beringian Snow Cat. Some people have seen the cat, describe it as the snow leopard. Foot prints, collected by Rodion, say: it could be snow leopard and Amur tiger both. At least such conclusion is possible to make from photos. Complete information about discovery of big cats in north-eastern edge of Asia will be published in next issue of the Rhythm Journal http://www.rhythmjournal.com I have to add, that we learned a lot of novelty at the time of Global Warming in 1990s-2000s. Tofalaria and Chukotka discoveries of the snow leopard represent extraordinary cases unknown earlier. If snow leopards survived in both areas from Pleistocene and are residential, it is not less interesting than in cases of their migrations. The current migration way of the snow leopard just shows an ancient way use to by snow leopard historically. It is especially interesting for Chukotka, located in Beringian Pleistocene bridge, connected Asia and America in the Ice Age. In 2008 we already described the phenomenon of periodical long distance migrations, rarely observed in populations of snow leopard, Amur leopard and Amur tiger, and caused by the hundred-year rhythm of climate’s warming (see bibliography). In last three centuries migrations of big cats in 1,000 kilometers from the main core of the range were well documented for Yakutia and Transbaikal territories, but never for Tofalaria and Chukotka.

Is someone will be interested in to support our field research in Tofalaria and Chukotka, please contact us by email rjournal.letters@gmail.com Evgeniy Kashkarov, PhD International Rhythm Research Institute.

Bibliography
Koshkarev E.P., 1994. Evaluation of the Presence of the Snow Leopard and the Ibex in South Siberia // Proceeding of the Seventh Int. Snow Leopard Symposium (July 25-30, 1992, China), 17-27.
Кошкарёв Е., 1995 а. Есть ли снежный барс на Байкале? Информационно-методический бюллетень «Волна», Иркутск.
Koshkarev E.P., 1995b. Has the Snow Leopard Disappeared from Eastern Sayan and Western Hovsogol? // report on 8th International Snow Leopard Symposium Proceedings (Islamabad, Pakistan, November 12-16, 1995), published in 1997, 96-107.
Koshkarev E.P., 1996. The Snow Leopard in its North-eastern Range // Cat News, Bulletin of IUCN, Switzerland, no. 25.
Koshkarev E.P., 1997a. Snow Leopard (Uncia uncia) in Western Hovsgol, Mongolia // Report for Discovery Initiatives, London, UK.
Koshkarev E.P., 1997b. Survey of the Snow Leopard in Northern Marginal Range of Southern Siberia // Report for Wildlife Conservation Society, NY, USA. Koshkarev E., 1998. The Snow Leopard along the border of Russia and Mongolia // IUCN Cat News , bulletin of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, Switzerland, no. 28, pp.12-14.
Kashkarov Evgeniy, Peter Baranov, Oleg Pomortsev, and Igor Ishchenko, 2008. Global Warming and the Northern Expansion of the Big Cats of Asia // Cat News 48, Spring, 24-27.
Баранов П.В., Кашкаров Е.П., 2008. Зоогеографический феномен: вековой  ритм расселения крупных кошек на северной периферии ареала // Rhythm Journal – журнал РИТМ, N2, Сиэтл-Иркутск, 232-247.
Kashkarov E., P.Baranov, O.Pomortsev, and I.Ishchenko. Hundred-year Cycle and the Northern Expansion of the Big Cats of Asia // Rhythm Journal – журнал РИТМ, N2, Seattle – Irkutsk, 2008, 248-254.
Кашкаров Е.П., Баранов П.В., Поморцев О.А., 2009. Вековые пульсации  ареалов млекопитающих // Rhythm Journal-журнал Рiтм, N2, 44-50.
Кашкаров Е.П., 2010. Cтратегия сохранения снежного барса // журнал Рiтм, 2010 (6), 187-195. Kashkarov Evgeniy, 2010. Snow Leopard Survival Strategy // Rhythm Journal, 2010 (6), 196-204.
Баранов П.В., Кашкаров Е.П., 2011. Большие кошки идут на север // Экология и жизнь N1 (110) 61-63.

(AP) SRINAGAR, India – A pair of rare, reclusive snow leopards have been photographed wandering a remote, mountain region once ravaged by conflict between India and Pakistan.

Infrared camera traps set up months ago by World Wildlife Fund-India filmed the adult snow leopards in Kargil district just a few miles from the heavily militarized Line of Control that runs through the disputed territory of Kashmir.

WWF-India says it is the second photo sighting of endangered snow leopards in Kargil, after one was photographed hunting a herd of Asiatic Ibex in 2009.

The recent sighting has encouraged environmentalists as it suggests the big cats were not scared away from the Kargil mountains by the 1999 India-Pakistan conflict that killed hundreds of soldiers on both sides before a cease-fire was established with U.S. mediation.

Snow leopards are considered the most endangered of big cats and face threats from poaching, habitat loss and retaliatory killings by farmers for lost livestock.

They live in regions of extreme cold and harsh terrain and are difficult to study. Between 4,000 and 6,500 are believed left in the wild in the Himalayan regions of Afghanistan, Bhutan, Siberia, Mongolia, Pakistan and India.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57388818/rare-snow-leopards-photgraphed-by-world-wildlife-fund/

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.