May 2009

More collaring success in Mongolia

May 28, 2009 Endangered species

Read the adventures of “Cookie guy”, also known as Orjan, a Swedish researcher working on radio collaring snow leopards in Mongolia. The locals like laughing at Orjan but he’s sure good at collaring wild snow leopards and collecting huge amounts of field data for the Snow Leopard Trust, an important wildlife protection group. Over the [...]

Read the full article →

Saving sheep from snow leopards, saves the snow leopards

May 24, 2009 India

When snow leopards kill domestic livestock in the villages of the Himalayas they are usually then hunted and killed by the owners in retaliation. It’s easy to understand why villagers would do this. Often these sheep and goats are the only livelihood they have, representing meat and money without which they and their families would [...]

Read the full article →

Kyrgyz anti-poaching unit gets tough

May 23, 2009 Illegal wildlife trade

The “Gruppa Bars”, an anti-poaching unit was set up to save snow leopards in the Kyrgyz Republic 10 years ago with the help of funding from the German conservation agency NABU. Gruppa Bars means ‘snow leopard’ in Kyrgyz. The team has far-reaching powers and is equipped with weapons. They have the power to arrest suspects [...]

Read the full article →

You can help

May 14, 2009 Saving snow leopards

Many of the conservation programs I’ve discussed on this Blog wouldn’t be possible without the hard work of the folks at the Snow Leopard Trust. You can turn your love for these beautiful cats into action today! Right now, your donation to the Snow Leopard Trust can have a big impact. Five donors, including the [...]

Read the full article →

Snow Leopard – beyond the myth

May 11, 2009 Pakistan

The ABC ran this beautiful program last night, our second snow leopard program on Melbourne TV in a week! It tracks the filming of a female snow leopard and her cub by Nisar Malik, a Pakistani journalist along with cameraman Mark Smith. They spent 18 months and two extreme winters getting footage of the cat [...]

Read the full article →

Apple's 'Snow Leopard' soon to be released

May 7, 2009 Saving snow leopards

We’ve all known for some time that Apple’s soon to be released operating system is named Snow Leopard (aka Mac OS X 10.6). And why not? I can see that the company and the product would like to be associated with a species that is hardy, built for incredible performance, speed, agility and astounding endurance [...]

Read the full article →

Illegal wildlife trade in Asia worth $10 billion

May 6, 2009 Endangered species

Illegal trade in wildlife in Asia is estimated at over $10 billion dollars, second only to weapons and drug smuggling. This is a staggering and potentially depressing story. But ASEAN nations have recently made major commitments at an ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network (WEN) meeting to improve enforcement and also halt habitat depletion. A sad case [...]

Read the full article →