August 2009

Afghanistan wild snow leopard update

August 31, 2009 Afghanistan

Great news from Afghanistan. For the second time in months the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has captured the elusive and rare snow leopard on film (with a camera trap) in the Sast Valley in Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor.  It is estimated only 100-200 snow leopards still survive in Afghanistan and the cat is protected under Afghanistan’s [...]

Read the full article →

Small world in zoos

August 25, 2009 Snow leopards in Zoos

Recently I was in touch with Rana Bayakci, the Program Coordinator for the Snow Leopard Network (SLN) in Seattle, USA.  And what a coincidence! Turns out Rana was a Keeper at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle in the early 1990’s when she met Gregor, our beautiful male snow leopard who was at Melbourne Zoo for many [...]

Read the full article →

Giant snow leopard leaps up city building

August 23, 2009 Mongolia

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado has raised money with its “Quarters for Conservation program” that is going towards snow leopard conservation in Mongolia. The Zoo is telling its story with a giant snow leopard poster on the Colorado Springs American National bank building. Megan Sanders, one of the zoo’s animal behavior managers has just returned from Mongolia where [...]

Read the full article →

Indian army searching for snow leopards on sacred glacier

August 21, 2009 India

The Indian Army is getting involved in helping the environment and India’s endangered flora and fauna. 15 men will be going up to the sacred Gangotri glacier in northern India near China’s border to search for snow leopard sightings and evidence of a rare plant, the legendary Brahma kamal, a medicinal plant named after the [...]

Read the full article →

Melbourne Zoo 'Gobi' gets namesake in Seattle

August 18, 2009 Endangered species

Our Gobi gets a namesake in the USA! The 11 week old male snow leopard was born at Woodland Park Zoo Seattle in May and over the weekend 35,000 entered a competition to name him and Gobi it is. His sister is Batu, which means firm and strong. Our Australian Gobi’s sister, Tashi, (Tibetan for [...]

Read the full article →

Woodland Park Zoo celebrates International Snow Leopard Day

August 16, 2009 Saving snow leopards

This weekend the WPZ in Seattle celebrates International Snow Leopard Day with a series of conseravtion talks and the naming of their two recently born snow leopard cubs. WPZ has one of the most successful snow leopard breeding programs and they do a lot of work with the Snow Leopard Trust. This is the Zoo [...]

Read the full article →

School kids doing project on Tashi and Gobi

August 13, 2009 Snow leopards in Zoos

I dropped by the Melbourne Zoo yesterday and visited the new cubs, Tashi and Gobi who are now 9 months old. The are almost as big as mum Meo from a distance. They were play fighting over a huge piece of meat, stalking each other through the grass, peeping around tree trunks and then pounce! [...]

Read the full article →

Apple Snow Leopard supports real snow leopard

August 13, 2009 Saving snow leopards

The buzz about the plight of the real snow leopard finally seems to be getting some traction in the Apple Mac community as the launch of the Snow Leopard operating system approaches. The Snow Leopard Trust in Seattle has announced that Apple has invited their Executive Director, Brad Rutherford to do a talk at Apple [...]

Read the full article →

Home of snow leopard and flying frog under threat from climate change

August 11, 2009 Endangered species

The WWF is calling on governments attending the climate change talks in Copenhagen this December to commit industrialised countries to a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 (compared to 1990 levels). “There is no room for compromise on this issue,” says WWF Conservation Science advisor, Mark Wright.  “Without these cuts the Himalayas face [...]

Read the full article →

Saving snow leopards in Kyrgyzstan

August 9, 2009 Kyrgyzstan

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifY_JgDDMW0&hl=en&fs=1&] Dr. Tom McCarthy has worked with snow leopards for many years and is Director of Field programs with of the Snow Leopard Trust. In this video he talks about the decreasing numbers of snow leopards in Kyrgyzstan and the community based conservation programs the Trust is developing there. These programs help the Kyrgyz villagers [...]

Read the full article →