In the remote mountains of northern Pakistan, four majestic snow leopards have been recorded recently moving through the snow-covered hills in a piece of footage that has ignited a flurry of excitement among conservationists.
These animals are seldom seen alone, much less in a group, and it’s being considered a sign of success for Pakistan’s conservation efforts in the animal’s habitat.
“For the past 15 days, I had been noticing leopard pawmarks. While I was on the roof of my house, I used binoculars to observe the mountains and spotted a female snow leopard along with her four cubs,” the photographer Sakhawat Ali told GNN.
“As a wildlife lover, I was extremely happy to see the snow leopards. I quickly moved closer and filmed them from a distance of about 150 meters.”
Ali lives in the remote village of Hushe, and is also a gamekeeper at the Central Karakorum National Park in Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region where the sighting was made. Snow leopards thrive here; their coats allow them to blend into the snowy mountains and remain undetected by their prey species.
That a female could have three large and healthy cubs is a sign that as much as the snow leopard population is doing well, prey populations of Siberian ibex, argali, roe deer, and Thorvold’s deer must also be thriving.
Still, the snow leopard is considered Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List because of its susceptibility to habitat loss and fragmentation across the mountain ranges it lives in.
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Pakistan, and indeed all 12 of the snow leopard range countries, have made great strides in halting and reversing declines of snow leopards over the last 20 years. CNN reported that Ali’s footage was celebrated by local villagers, even though snow leopards sometimes kill livestock.
Dr. Zakir Hussain, the Chief Conservator of Parks and Wildlife for Gilgit-Baltistan told CNN that 80% of the region’s communities are engaged in the tracking, monitoring, and reporting of snow leopard populations on a citizen science basis.
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The snow leopard can be found in Russia, China, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan, which together make up the Global Snow Leopard Forum, an international platform for coordinating and sharing conservation strategies to protect this borderless wanderer between state wildlife and environment ministries and NGOs like the Snow Leopard Trust.
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