Credit: ©Y. Protas/Panthera/WWF Central Asia Program/Uzbek Biocontrol Agency/Gissar Nature Reserve.
Hard work and perseverance by snow leopard conservationists has chalked up another first for the world’s most elusive big cat. For the first time we have remote camera photographs of snow leopards in Uzbekistan. Two of the beautiful cats were caught in photos in the Gissar Nature Reserve in the Pamir Mountains.
Uzbekistan is one of the twelve Asian countries that have snow leopards but little is known about them in this country.
The images have been released by two conservation organisations with snow leopard programs, Panthera and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Ongoing work in this region is also supported by Snow Leopard Grants from the global Snow Leopard Network.
Panthera announced that “in November and December of 2013, a team of rangers and biologists led by Bakhtiyor Aromov and Yelizaveta Protas, in collaboration with Panther and WWF Central Asia Program, conducted a snow leopard camera trap study in the Kizilsu area of Gissar Nature Reserve, on the border of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Images taken through the study have confirmed the presence of at least two individual snow leopards in the region, along with other large predators – lynx and bear – and an abundance of prey animals, including ibex, wild boar, and hare.”
Fist ever snow leopards caught on camera trap in Uzbekistan. Credit: ©Y. Protas/Panthera/WWF Central Asia Program/Uzbek Biocontrol Agency/Gissar Nature Reserve .
Researchers will continue work in this Reserve during 2014. We wish them great luck and look forward to learning more about these snow leopards.
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