PAWS: Population Assessment of the World’s Snow leopards
At the International Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Conservation Forum 2017 in Bishkek, the range country governments formally endorsed a plan to develop a global snow leopard population assessment. The ambitious initiative, called Population Assessment of the World’s Snow Leopards, or, in short, PAWS, aims to produce a robust estimate of the threatened cat’s population status within the next 5 years.
The GSLEP secretariat has been tasked with coordinating this initiative, and has developed an Action Plan which has been approved by the GSLEP Steering Committee.
PAWS aims to bring together the global snow leopard conservation community’s resources, manpower and expertise to jointly arrive at a scientifically robust population estimate.
Find out more on the GSLEP Website.
PAWS TOOLS
The GSLEP Secretariat and various partners have created a number of tools designed to help snow leopard scientists more effectively and efficiently collect and analyze population data, and to ensure that they are consistent with the recommendations of the PAWS Science Advisory Group.
Macro vs micro-level designs: The PAWS approach breaks assessing the abundance of snow leopard populations into two steps. First, we decide which areas to survey (macro level). Then, we decide where to place cameras in each survey area (micro level).