“When not teaching I like to spend my days in Skardu, chasing after snow leopards. Project Snow Leopard is an insurance scheme in several valleys of northern Pakistan that compensates farmers for goats killed by the big cats. It has saved the lives of between 25 and 40 snow leopards. I like chasing snow leopards as it takes me right in the heart of the some of the tallest mountains in the world.”
Shafqat Hussain was born in Pakistan and is the founder of Project Snow Leopard(PSL). This week he kindly agreed to share some of his insights into future directions for snow leopard conservation and his work in Pakistan over the last 15 years with “Saving Snow Leopards”.
Shafqat is trained in social and political ecology and is interested in understanding how human societies and environment shape each other. In 2006 he received an Associate Laureate Rolex Award for Enterprise and was the 2009 National Geographic Emerging Explorer. He is currently a Professor of Anthropology at Trinity College, Hartford, CT USA.
Thankyou and welcome Shafqat.
Snow leopard looking into remote camera in Pakistan. Photo (c) Shafqat Hussain.
How did you become involved with snow leopard research / conservation?
During the 1990s, I worked in Gilgit-Baltistan region of northern Pakistan on issues related to rural development and environmental conservation. The organizations I worked for did not focus on snow leopard conservation, despite the fact that snow leopards were persecuted by local farmers when snow leopards killed their livestock. The only organization that was working to actively conserve snow leopards was WWF- Pakistan, but their approach was a traditional based on protected areas. I then realized that there was a need to initiate a community-based snow leopard conservation project whereby communities’ economic concern are also addressed while protecting the snow leopards. So in 1998, I started a community-based livestock insurance scheme to resolve the conflict between local farmers and the snow leopard. Today, we are working in partnership with WWF – Pakistan and local government agencies on community-based snow leopard conservation efforts. In addition there are other organizations, such as Snow Leopard Foundation, who are making important contribution towards snow leopard conservation in the area.
Shafqat has forged close relationships with village communities to help them and snow leopards. Hushe, Pakistan. Photo Thierry Grobet.
What are the projects you are working on and where are they?
All of our projects are in the Baltistan region of northern Pakistan. We are working in about ten different villages where we have set up community conservation committees who implement community-based insurance schemes. In addition, we upgrade community and individual corrals to make them predator proof, impart environmental education in local schools and colleges and carry out population and diet preference surveys through genetics using scats samples. Through our diet preference study we want to highlight the fact that local people often end up unwittingly subsidize snow leopard population by feeding them their livestock.
What are your biggest challenges?
Our biggest challenge is to convince the international conservation organizations to use more social science and humanistic approaches to conservation. The challenge is even more difficult to overcome especially when more than 99% of the snow leopard experts are natural scientists who have very little training in and sympathetic view of social sciences. Many experts do acknowledge that snow leopard conservation is as much a biological problem as a social and human one, but still resist incorporating truly humanistic and social scientific approaches to conservation. There is excessive natural science focus in snow leopard research which dictates the kinds of management actions that are taken.
A herder in the beautiful snow leopard habitat of Skardu. Photo by Thierry Grobet.
A very quick glance at about 400 or so papers on snow leopards available in the Snow Leopard Network bibliography shows that a mere seven percent are about social issues such as conflict with local people and/or the economic burden they bear. Most papers are about its status and distribution and its ecology, and about various methods and techniques of studying its behaviour. These studies “reproduce” the snow leopard as a scientific object with little conservation or management value.
What is your hope for the future of snow leopards and the people sharing their home range?
I think coexistence is the only way forward. Fortress conservation does not work and has been hailed as neo-colonial. I hope to see mountains full of wild and domesticated species in a symbiotic nature-culture complex. Helping this incredible species and the people who its environment are equally important to us. Not one or the other, but both.”
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