KATHMANDU — The elusive snow leopard (Panthera uncia), often described as the “ghost of the mountains,” has captivated the imagination of researchers, the general public and mountain communities for centuries. Fables related to this enigmatic big cat have been handed down from generation to generation, weaving a sense of mystery and reverence for the cat of the rugged mountain terrain.
Its uncanny ability to blend seamlessly into its surroundings, coupled with its natural aversion to human presence, makes direct encounters exceptionally rare. The snow leopard is so elusive that even researchers dedicated to studying this animal often go years without seeing one in the wild.
Despite their elusive nature, they play a crucial role in the mountain ecosystem as its apex predator and keystone species. That’s why the animal is one of the priority species for conservation activities in Nepal, where researchers deploy several techniques such as camera traps, tracking footprints in the snow and studying scat samples to learn more about snow leopards.
The year 2024 marked significant milestones for the animal for several reasons. While a snow leopard was spotted for the first time in living memory in Nepal’s plains, the government shifted its conservation focus from research to conflict mitigation. Similarly, a government committee is aggregating various studies carried out around the country to come up with a scientific estimate of its population. Here’s a summary of Mongabay‘s coverage of snow leopards in Nepal in 2024:
In Nepal, conservationists have traditionally considered tigers (P. tigris) the apex predators of the country’s southern plains, leopards (P. pardus) as that of the hill region and snow leopards in the mountains.
However, in January this year, a juvenile snow leopard was discovered in the town of Urlabari (which translates to “home of the tiger” in the local Santhal language) where the “ghosts of the mountains” have not been reported in living memory.
While climate change was the usual suspect, researchers said they believed the snow leopard may have come there after escaping illegal captivity; others said it could have lost its way during dispersal, a natural process in which young animals leave their birth area to establish their own territory.
Amid the speculation, a study published in October suggested that the animal may have ventured down from the mountains shortly before it was found during dispersal. The snow leopard is now a part of the public collection of the Central Zoo in Lalitpur.
Other big news for the cats came in October when the country’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) published the new snow leopard conservation plan for 2024-30. Conservationists said this document marks a shift in focus from research and monitoring to community engagement and conflict resolution.
While the 2017-21 plan allocated 30% of its budget to research and monitoring, the new one prioritizes community engagement and conflict mitigation with 35% of the budget. The overall budget for the plan has also been increased significantly, from $3.2 million to $14.2 million.
The action plan states that more funding is required for community engagement and compensation programs, as “surplus killings” — in which the cats kill multiple livestock at once — add to the frustrations of local communities, and this could trigger retaliatory killings of the big cats.
Despite receiving a lot of attention from policymakers and researchers, surprisingly, Nepal doesn’t have up-to-date data on the animal’s population distribution in the country. In mid-2024, the government formed a committee to come up with a number, or even just a range, for the population of snow leopards in the country.
The earliest estimates came from the pioneering telemetry work by researcher Rodney Jackson and his team in the late 1980s and early ’90s. They first estimated the snow leopard population in Nepal to be around 150-300 in 1979 and later revised the number up to 350-500 individuals based on a computerized habitat suitability model. In 2009, researchers from WWF and the DNPWC came up with a new estimate of 301-400 based on a model describing the relationship between sign (scrape) encounter rates, the snow leopard numbers assessed through genetic analysis and the habitat suitability assessment in the Nepal Himalayas.
The committee faces a tough challenge, as it needs to aggregate data from different studies carried out in different parts of the country using varied methodologies. The initial plan was to come up with a number by Oct. 23, International Snow Leopard Day. However, it will take at least a few more months for the committee to complete its work, according to members.
In addition to this, snow leopards were also a part of popular culture in Nepal in the past year. In Nepali filmmaker Min Bahadur Bham’s award-winning movie Shambhala, the protagonist Pema’s horse is apparently killed by a snow leopard while on a quest to find her missing husband in the mountains.
Similarly, the documentary film Snow Leopard, directed by journalist Pradip Pokhrel, won an honorable mention at the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival in Mexico in October this year. The snow leopard was also adopted as the official mascot of the Nepal Premier League cricket tournament, which is being followed by the sport’s fans in the country and beyond.
This article by Abhaya Raj Joshi was first published by Mongabay.com on 12 December 2024. Lead Image: A snow leopard photographed in Nepal’s Himalayas. Image courtesy of Sanjog Rai/ WWF Nepal.
