Ganaa the Mongolian herder who is taking a keen interest in snow leopard conservation with the Panthera / Snow Leopard Trust research team. Photo Barbara Blywise.

Ganaa is a herder from a small community in Mongolian snow leopard habitat of the Tost Mountains. Here Panthera and Snow Leopard Trust are doing a world first long-term snow leopard research project. Ganna lives in a tent nearby and makes his living from a herd of domestic livestock. Traditionally herders like Ganaa and the snow leopard would have been arch enemies as often the cats killed herders livestock. But this time the research team on site invited Ganaa to see how they worked. The SLT reports, “ We wanted Ganna to witness for himself why we are studying snow leopards. He became the first herder present during the collaring of a wild snow leopard and he was incredibly touched by the event. When we offered him the chance to pick a name for the snow leopard, he honored the cat with the name of his daughter Jade or Khashaa in Mongolian. Ganna linked the fate of his family to the fate of this snow leopard and he has been back to check on Khashaa ever since. More-over, Ganaa has become an ambassador for snow leopard conservation throughout his community.” A lovely story showing humans and top predators like snow leopards can live harmoniously together.  read more about this research project.

A Bactrian camel will be special guest at the Snow Leopard Conservancy's 10th birthday celebration next week.

The Snow Leopard Conservancy celebrates its 10th birthday next week. Started by world renowned snow leopard expert Dr Rodney Jackson and his wife Darla Hillard, the Conservancy has done ground breaking work in India and other countries to educate communities, research snow leopard habitat and the life of these rare cats.
They’ll be putting on a gala event next week in San Francisco, with talks, exhibitions, auctions, a Himalayan bazaar and a visit from a Bactrian camel, the two humped critically endangered animal that shares its home habitat in Mongolia with snow leopards.
Snowleopardblog.com congratulates the Conservancy – and wishes you best of luck in your work to save wild snow leopards for the next 10 years.

Carcass of a bharal (wild goat) killed by snow leopard. Photo Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi

A fascinating report of a snow leopard killing a wild goat high up in the Indian Himalayas by Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi, who is a research scholar with the Nature Conservation Foundation in Mysore, India.

“An hour of hard climbing through knee-deep snow took me to the crest of the plateau at an altitude of 4,500 metres. I gasped for breath in the rarefied air of the endless Tibetan steppe grassland that extended in front of me. Resting my weight on an ice axe, I was admiring the panoramic view when a silhouette on the snow caught my eye. It was a snow leopard moving gently, almost like an elf, hardly leaving a footprint. It was about 200 metres away, perpendicular to my line of sight, and seemed unaware of my presence. I sank to my knees and reached for my binoculars. [click to continue…]

A beautiful male snow leopard, which appeared in the fantasy film ‘The Golden Compass’ a few years ago, (starred Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman) was recently rehoused at the Lakeland Wildlife Oasis at Hale in the UK.
Pavan, is one of two celebrity snow leopards that played the part of Stelmaria, Lord Asriel’s daemon or soul mate in the film. Along with the other cat, Pavesh, he was born and raised at the Cat Survival Trust in Welwyn, England.

Hopefully Pavan will breed in his new home. For visitors there is a large walk through acrylic tunnel in his enclosure where visitors can get up close and personal with Pavan. Here’s a video showing Dr Terry Moore, founder of The Cat Survival Trust and his team moving the cat along a noisy UK freeway. Pavan, who was not sedated, looked very calm.

Pavan’s move to Lakeland Wildlife Oasis from Jahled on Vimeo.

Muni and Marta at Port Lympne Animal Park were part of Alaina Macri's snow leopard behavior research. Photo A. Macri.

Many Zoos around the world with snow leopards have to decide if adult cats should be on their own or housed with other cats. In the wild of course, snow leopards are solitary except for a short mating time and when cubs stay with their mother till adulthood at about 2 years of age. One young biologist recently studied snow leopards in zoos to see if they had a preference for company or being on their own.

Canadian born biologist Alaina Macri is our guest blogger and she explains her fascinating research to us. Work like this is important so zoo staff can improve the lives of cats in their care.

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Beautiful town of Leh in northern India, snow leopard habitat. Leh in winter is icy and cold, but plastic water bottle free all year. Photo Sibylle Noras.

It’s the 41st annual Earth Day and organisers have got an online pledge facility happening. Over 100 million people are pledging to make a change in their lives, even litle things like taking shorter showers, planting a vegetable patch and one of my favorites, giving up the purchase of water in plastic bottles.

I was so impressed when I was in Leh, Ladakh India, for my snow leopard trek recently. The town, which has about 35,000 people and thousands of local and western tourists every summer, has gone plastic bottle free. For so many years discarded bottles choked the little waterways and streams of this beautiful Himalayan town, but no more. Go people!

If you feel like helping the Earth today, visit the Pledge site to take part. Every little thing we do helps our environment, our wildlife (including snow leopards and their habitat in the mountains of Asia) and our future generations.

First snow leopard photo ever captured in Uttarakhand state in India. Photo Wildlife Institute of India.

A camera placed in the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve has captured an image of a snow leopard, the first photographic evidence of the elusive cat in the state of Uttarakhand in northern India.

Yogendra Joshi, a member of the Snow Leopard Network says “The legends of this cat know as ‘Him Tendua’ in Hindi has been part of stories and folklore since time immemorial. Although I heard many a stories from villagers and nomads it was the first time a conclusive evidence was reported in the state where I live.” [click to continue…]

Our snow leopard looking across the valley at us in Hemis National Park, Ladakh, India. We watched her for 8 hours. Photo Sibylle Noras

I got two inquiries this week from folks in India wanting to know the area  for best chance to see snow leopard. After my fantastic trip in February with the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust I have to say Hemis National Park in Ladakh in northern India is special snow leopard habitat. Of course there are no guarantees and we met many people who had trekked for weeks without seeing a cat. But the odds here are probably better than anywhere else I have heard of.  I’d love to hear from you if you know an area where chances of sightings are high.

Beautiful Mongolian landscape, significant snow leopard habitat.

Regular readers of this Blog will recall that last month there was a successful campaign to convince the government of Mongolia to overturn a decision to allow the killing of four snow leopards for ‘research’ purposes. This was a hugely important decision and could not have been achieved without the hard work and dedicated lobbying of many people, including many Mongolian folks on the ground. I’d like to take the opportunity to acknowledge all those I haven’t mentioned in this Blog before – it was an incredible effort of which you can all be proud and supporters of snow leopards everywhere thank you. [click to continue…]