Snow Leopard Trust

10/13/2026

In January 2008, Kulbhushansingh “Kullu” Suryawanshi encountered three snow leopards in Spiti: a mother, her cub, and a young male beginning to make his way on his own.

Kullu named the young male Shadow. Their paths would cross again as Kullu built a career studying snow leopards and learning from the communities that share their mountain landscapes.

Kullu’s book, The Ghost of the Mountains, brings together nearly two decades of field research, community relationships, and lessons about conserving snow leopards in places where people and wildlife share the land.

Read more about Kullu, Shadow, and the experiences behind the book:
https://snowleopard.org/kullu-shadow-and-the-ghost-of-the-mountains/

Photo: Shadow in his prime
Credit: NCF-India

10/09/2026

How do you count an animal that can disappear into some of Earth's harshest mountain terrain?

For decades, snow leopard population estimates relied on limited surveys, small study areas, and assumptions that often overstated how many cats were actually there.

Today, researchers and range-country governments are working toward a more rigorous shared standard through PAWS, the Population Assessment of the World’s Snow Leopards. New methods are also reducing identification errors in camera-trap studies and improving the reliability of population estimates across High Asia.

Why does it matter? Because better data helps identify populations in trouble, protect critical landscapes, and direct conservation resources where they are needed most.

Read more: https://snowleopard.org/how-do-you-count-a-ghost-cat-2/

10/08/2026

What does it take to live alongside snow leopards for decades?

In Mongolia, Dr. Tserennadmid “Nadia” Mijiddorj has spent more than 20 years working with herding communities and has learned that lasting conservation cannot be built through quick fixes or short project cycles. It depends on trust, listening, and long-term relationships.

Through the Leopard Conservation Foundation (SLCF), Snow Leopard Trust’s partner organization in Mongolia, community members have helped shape approaches including livestock insurance, community rangers, Snow Leopard Enterprises, and Community Responsible Areas.

These programs grew through years of dialogue, adjustment, and shared decision-making. They also helped inform the PARTNERS Principles, which guide more ethical, community-centered conservation practice.

Read the full story:
https://snowleopard.org/living-with-snow-leopards-takes-trust/

As a teenager in Mongolia, Dr. Tserennadmid (Nadia) Mijiddorj watched herders come to her family home after snow leopards had taken their livestock. Those early conversations shaped more than twenty years of work building trust between communities and conservationists.

10/05/2026

How do you count an animal that can disappear into some of Earth's harshest mountain terrain?

For decades, snow leopard population estimates relied on limited surveys, small study areas, and assumptions that often overstated how many cats were actually there.

Today, researchers and range-country governments are working toward a more rigorous shared standard through PAWS, the Population Assessment of the World’s Snow Leopards. New methods are also reducing identification errors in camera-trap studies and improving the reliability of population estimates across High Asia.

Why does it matter? Because better data helps identify populations in trouble, protect critical landscapes, and direct conservation resources where they are needed most.

Read more: https://snowleopard.org/how-do-you-count-a-ghost-cat-2/

With a range spanning some of the planet’s harshest mountain terrain, the snow leopard is one of nature’s most elusive big cats. It lives at densities of roughly one to three animals per 100 square kilometers, earning its reputation as the ghost of the mountains.

09/18/2026

Presnel, one of the collared female snow leopards in our long-term study in Mongolia, killed an argali, the largest of the wild sheep. Our scientists estimate it weighed around 350 pounds (160 kg). Presnel weighs about 80 pounds (35 kg).

She shared it with her three cubs. Snow leopards stay near a large kill for several days, eating every few hours and keeping the ravens and vultures away.

Read about what else snow leopards eat, and why large male ibex are often the target: snowleopard.org/what-do-snow-leopards-eat/

Photo Caption: Photo of Presnel and cubs.

Photo Credit: Snow Leopard Trust and Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation

09/14/2026

For decades, Pakistan’s snow leopard population was estimated from limited surveys, questionnaires, and expert judgment. In a recent Space Daily article, Kiran examines how years of camera trapping and genetic analysis have produced the country’s first robust nationwide baseline.

The article highlights that two independent methods arrived at remarkably similar estimates: 155 snow leopards from camera-trap data and 167 from genetic analysis. It also notes that the result is lower than many earlier estimates, while emphasizing that those earlier figures were based on very different and much more limited methods. The article cautions that this does not automatically mean the population has declined; the higher earlier figures may instead have been overestimates.

More in Space Daily:

https://spacedaily.com/k-for-decades-pakistans-snow-leopard-population-was-a-guess-put-somewhere-between-100-and-400-animals-from-questionnaires-and-expert-hunches-until-a-decade-long-survey-of-828-cameras-and-more-than-1/

A decade of camera traps and genetic analysis finally replaced guesswork with hard numbers—revealing Pakistan's snow leopard population may be far smaller than conservationists hoped.

09/08/2026

Sue Heim started volunteering at the San Diego Zoo eight years ago and fell for snow leopard cubs on sight. That interest grew into years of support for Snow Leopard Trust, and now into a place in her estate plan.

Sue once considered joining snow leopard fieldwork in Mongolia, but the cold nights in a research tent ruled that out. She found another way to back the research, staff, and conservation work happening in snow leopard habitat. "Sometimes you cannot always put your boots on the ground to help, but a legacy gift is the next best thing," she says.

Read Sue's story: https://snowleopard.org/a-legacy-for-snow-leopards/

Sue Heim’s love of snow leopards began at the zoo and grew into a lifelong commitment to protect them. By including Snow Leopard Trust in her estate, she found a way to support the research, people, and conservation work she could not carry out in the field herself.

08/29/2026

Secretive, Scattered, and Still Detectable

In the Bashqar Gol Biosphere Reserve in northern Pakistan, our partners at the Snow Leopard Foundation (SLF) are surveying wildlife by collecting the genetic traces animals leave behind in hair, skin, saliva, and s**t. Their teams collected 25 water samples from rivers and ponds, 24 soil samples from scrapes and resting sites, 19 air samples pulled through portable filters, and 12 s**t samples sealed in sterile tubes. In the lab, DNA is extracted and sequenced from each one.

Sequencing identifies which species have passed through the area and can also indicate what those animals have been eating, which habitats they use, and how their ranges overlap.

Snow leopards are secretive and thinly spread across enormous terrain, which makes them expensive and slow to survey by conventional means. eDNA is noninvasive, so no animals are disturbed in the process of collecting data. It is cheaper per sample and scales across a country where camera traps and transects are hard to deploy. Paired with traditional fieldwork, it gives conservation planners firmer ground to stand on.

In the Laspur Valley, 12 Community Wildlife Guards drawn from local villages patrol against poaching and illegal hunting, coordinate with the Wildlife Department, and raise awareness among their neighbors. The eDNA sampling shows which species are using the reserve. The guards patrol to prevent poaching.

Article by Jamiullah Khan:

https://snowleopard.org/next-gen-wildlife-tracking-in-pakistan

The Snow Leopard Trust partners with the Snow Leopard Foundation in Pakistan and with organizations in four other range countries on long-term research and community-based conservation to protect snow leopards and their habitat.

The snow-capped mountains of northern Pakistan are home to some of the world’s most elusive species, from the iconic snow leopard to wolves, bears, and ibex. Protecting them is no easy task. They roam vast, rugged landscapes, often at low densities, making them difficult to track. Yet, our team at...

08/20/2026

In Mongolia, an estimated 75–80% of snow leopard habitat lies outside protected areas.

That makes the people who live and work across these pastoral landscapes central to the future of snow leopards.

This week at UNCCD COP17 Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar, Dr. Nadia Mijiddorj of the Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation , Snow Leopard Trust ’s partner organization in Mongolia, presented SLCF’s Community Responsible Area model for community-led land stewardship.

Community Responsible Areas begin with local priorities. Communities define and map an area, develop a practical management plan, work through agreements with local government and conservation partners, and help monitor what happens on the land.

Today, 36 Community Responsible Areas covering 23,648 km² are part of SLCF’s approach in Mongolia.

Snow Leopard Trust works in partnership with SLCF to support long-term conservation across Mongolia’s snow leopard landscapes. SLCF’s Community Responsible Area model connects land governance with conservation, livelihoods, community ranger monitoring, and the long-term stewardship of landscapes shared by people and snow leopards.

08/19/2026

At dawn in Kibber, India, Tanzin Chhoyi watches the ridges above her village for snow leopards.

“I have seen the cat many times before,” she says.

Tanzin knows which slopes the cats use and where they are likely to appear. That local knowledge now supports a winter tourism economy that includes 13 homestays, 25 wildlife spotters, and around 30 women who sell handicrafts. Between 350 and 550 visitors come to Kibber each winter specifically to see snow leopards.

The relationship between the village and the cats has a difficult history. Thirty years ago, losing dozens of heads of livestock in a single corral attack could cause severe economic harm. Following one such attack, villagers killed the snow leopard responsible.

Over the following decades, Kibber residents worked with the Nature Conservation Foundation and Snow Leopard Trust on livestock insurance, predator-resistant corrals, grazing-free reserves, wildlife monitoring, and other approaches to coexistence. Community members now host visitors, work as wildlife spotters, identify cats in camera-trap images, sell locally made goods, and enforce village rules to reduce tourism’s impact.

Tourism has brought income and recognition, but residents also report litter, off-road driving, increased waste, and pressure from visitors who expect guaranteed sightings.

Read how Kibber’s community is shaping the future of snow leopard tourism:
https://snowleopard.org/when-the-world-comes-for-the-snow-leopard/

Nature Conservation Foundation Snow Leopard Trust

At dawn, in winter, a snow leopard moves along a ridge above Kibber, in Spiti Valley, India. It picks its way across the rock the way it always has, unhurried, indifferent to the village below. Watching from the village is Tanzin Chhoyi. "I have seen the cat many times before," she says, "but the en...