Tag: Som Ale

Nepal’s snow leopards to be counted

November 3 2011 at 06:00pm

REUTERS

Kathmandu – Nepal has launched the first census of its snow leopards, local media reported, in a bid to raise awareness of the endangered species.

Closed circuit television cameras have been installed around the northern district of Mustang, at an altitude of 4,000 to 5,000 metres, and are planned to count the district’s leopards within two months.

“The census aims to find the exact population of snow leopards and conserve them,” Som Ale, one of the conservationists involved in the project, was quoted as saying by the Kathmandu Post.

“We believe it will help bring awareness about conservation of leopards among people.”

The project is being carried out jointly by the National Trust for Nature Conservation, the Annapurna Conservation Area Project and other partners.

Nepal’s snow leopards live in the Mugu, Mustang, Dolpa and Humla districts in the northern belt, at an altitude of around 5,000 metres.

Conservationists say their number is rapidly declining and put the current figure at 300 to 500.

“Major threats for snow leopards come from the human and wildlife conflict,” World Wide Fund for Nature official Kamal Thapa told dpa.

“Villagers kill the animals for attacking their livestock.”

The conservationist group is running insurance programmes to discourage people from attacking the endangered species to defend their cattle. – Sapa-dpa

http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/environment/nepal-s-snow-leopards-to-be-counted-1.1171081

Nepal children to track snow leopard

(AFP) – 1 day ago (8Nov11)

KATHMANDU — Conservationists in Nepal have enlisted an army of school children to record the movements of the mysterious snow leopard, one of the most elusive predators in the world, a scientist said Tuesday.

Experts believe just 500 adults survive in the Himalayan nation, and few can claim ever to have seen the secretive, solitary “mountain ghost”, which lives 5,000 to 6,000 metres (16,500 to 20,000 ft) above sea level.

“Snow leopards are inherently rare, and also elusive in the sense that they are active during dusk and dawn, so few people, including biologists, have seen a snow leopard to date,” said Som Ale of the US-based Snow Leopard Conservancy.

The group has enlisted children from schools in the leopard’s habitat in Mustang, in Nepal’s mountainous northern frontier, who will work in pairs to instal and monitor digital cameras to count the endangered species.

The census, due to be carried out over two months in winter, will give scientists a more accurate idea of numbers in Nepal than more primitive techniques, including recording tracks and collecting droppings.

Although the Snow Leopard Conservancy used camera traps on a study in India six years ago, the group says this is the first survey of a large predator anywhere in the world by local communities who are not paid conservation experts.

“In parts of Africa, lions may be monitored by local people but they are well paid professional guides,” Ale told AFP.

The pupils will be trained to set up digital cameras that take infra-red images and operate in sub-zero temperatures to areas where snow leopards would be expected to visit.

Computer programmers will then use each animal’s unique pelt to create to estimate the number of snow leopards.

The snow leopard is protected in Nepal by an act of parliament dating back to the 1970s which provides for penalties of up to 100,000 rupees ($1,300) and up to 15 years in jail for poachers.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g2h8tb_BwsQEMXAPBvrcxHz5RwQQ?docId=CNG.02fbdd3cdd7a5a2b24dbe36f048af38a.631

Nepal children enlisted to track elusive snow leopard

Published on Nov 9, 2011

Conservationists in Nepal have enlisted an army of school children to record the movements of the mysterious snow leopard, one of the most elusive predators in the world, a scientist said Nov 8, 2011. — PHOTO: AFPKATHMANDU (AFP) – Conservationists in Nepal have enlisted an army of school children to record the movements of the mysterious snow leopard, one of the most elusive predators in the world, a scientist said on Tuesday.

Experts believe just 500 adults survive in the Himalayan nation, and few can claim ever to have seen the secretive, solitary ‘mountain ghost’, which lives 5,000 to 6,000 metres above sea level.

‘Snow leopards are inherently rare, and also elusive in the sense that they are active during dusk and dawn, so few people, including biologists, have seen a snow leopard to date,’ said Dr Som Ale of the United States-based Snow Leopard Conservancy (SLC).

The group has enlisted children from schools in the leopard’s habitat in Mustang, in Nepal’s mountainous northern frontier, who will work in pairs to install and monitor digital cameras to count the endangered species.

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_731723.html

National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) and US-based Snow Leopard Conservancy has launched snow leopard conservation project in Nepal

Snow leopard conservation project

Added At: 2011-04-03 11:36 PM
Last Updated At: 2011-04-03 11:36 PM
The Himalayan Times – HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: The National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) and US-based Snow leopards Conservancy has launched the snow leopard conservation project.

Altogether there are 4,510 to 7,350 snow leopards across the world. Nepal has around 500 of them.”Special efforts are required to conserve the species,” said Som Ale, an expert.

In Nepal, the snow leopard is found in Mustang, Mugu, Dolpa and Humla. The government has legally protected the snow leopard by including it on the list of protected animals in the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 1973 and provisioning penalties up to NRs 100,000 or 5 to 15 years imprisonment or both, for poaching snow leopards and buying and selling of its pelt and bones.

“We are now gearing up efforts to conserve a most elusive species in the world,” said Krishna Prasad Acharya, Director General, Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation.

The snow leopard-human conflict is taken as one of the main threats to its survival as it is known to kill sheep, goats, horses, and yak calves.

“The snow leopards are facing the problem of poaching and habitat loss, so there is need for community-based conservation efforts to tackle this problem,” said Juddha Bahadur Gurung, Member Secretary, NTNC.

http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Snow+leopard+conservation+project+&NewsID=282531

Article from August 2006: Endangered cats leave ‘trail of fear’: Snow leopards tracked by monitoring fright of their prey.

Published online 10 August 2006 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news060807-12

Endangered cats leave ‘trail of fear’: Snow leopards tracked by monitoring fright of their prey.

Michael Hopkin

The endangered snow leopard has returned to the valleys around Mount Everest, say wildlife researchers working in Nepal. And how do they know it’s back? Because the leopards’ traditional prey are terrified.

Tracking top predators by spotting the fear they instil in their prey could offer a new way to monitor the conservation status of rare animals, says Som Ale of the University of Illinois-Chicago, who came up with the idea. “We can get clues about their whereabouts from the behaviour of their main prey species,” he says.

He and his colleague Joel Brown tracked the elusive snow leopard (Uncia uncia) by observing the behaviour of its usual prey, the Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus), a relative of wild goats.

The leopards, of which there are only around 6,000 left in the wild, had vanished completely from the foothills of Everest after the region was opened up to tourists in the years following the first conquest of the mountain in 1953.

The tahr have had a relatively easy ride since 1976, when Everest and the surrounding area were declared a national park. But since 2000, their population has stopped growing and the number of mothers with young has dwindled, leading some conservationists to suspect that the snow leopard was back.

The problem lay in proving it — spotting the leopards is immensely difficult. “For many conservationists it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event,” Ale says. But the tahr are much better at spotting leopards; after all, their lives can depend on it.

On the look-out
The researchers therefore sought to spot the hallmarks of fear among the previously complacent tahr. Signs include ears standing on end, eyes focused into the distance, and a whistling cry used to communicate danger to other tahr.

Ale and Brown found that the tahr were most vigilant on cliffs and in open forests. And when they checked these habitats, they found droppings and paw-prints from the leopards. Ale presented the results at the meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Memphis, Tennessee.

What’s more, observation of the tahr led to six direct sightings of the leopards, Ale says. Simply watching the tahr will not allow a census of the leopard population. But if it leads to direct leopard visuals it may be valuable in estimating how many leopards are living in the area.

Of course, the plan would not have worked at all but for the fact that the tahr have no other natural predators, meaning that they only get scared of leopards. Not even the local people are a threat. “The people who live there are Sherpas, who are Buddhists,” Ale explains.

That meant that the researchers could get within some 20 metres of the tahr without causing them to flee, says Ale — which was useful for monitoring their behaviour. “And it meant we got really good photos of them,” he adds.

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060807/full/news060807-12.html