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New Delhi/Srinagar: Some days ago, on a wind-swept, desolate mountainside in Jammu and
Kashmir's Kargil district, infra-red cameras captured a shape
moving about in the cold winter night. To the naked, untrained
eye, it might have appeared to be a ghostly apparition. But for
environmentalists, it was a cause for celebration.
For that shape was none other than a snow leopard - the
mysterious, secretive and most endangered cat of Asia.
"We had set up four camera traps just a few kilometres away from
the Line of Control (LoC) in October 2010. They have now yielded
more than 500 snaps. This is the first time that snow leopards
have been shot by camera traps. In 2009, I had shot one with a
hand-held camera," researcher Aishwarya Maheshwari who led the WWF
team that set the traps told IANS.
Maheshwari's achievement received an enthusiastic response from
India's environmental community. "It shows that wildlife can
survive in conflict zones too," feels Maheshwari.
The snow leopard (Panthera Uncia) is mainly found in mountainous
central and south Asia, in mountain ranges like the Altai, Pamirs,
Tian Shan, Kunlun, Hindu Kush, Karakoram and the Himalayas.
Koustubh Sharma, senior regional ecologist at the India chapter of
the US-based Snow Leopard Conservation Trust, says, "Snow leopards
are found across 12 countries and an area of two million sq km. As
few as 3,500 or 7,000 individuals are believed to be left in the
wild. In India, a ball park estimate is that of about 700-1,000
individuals."
Given that the snow leopard's range covers some of the highest
mountains of the world, research on the animal has always been
difficult, if not impossible. Says Maheshwari, "It is very
difficult to sight a snow leopard. For one, their range covers
several international borders and conflict zones. Secondly, they
are mostly found in mountainous areas, above the tree line,
usually starting at 3,000 metres. In such regions, biologists can
only work during short summers and not winters when temperatures
dip. A lack of logistic support thus hinders research," Maheshwari
told IANS.
But research is what is needed most today as poaching, habitat and
prey base loss and retaliatory killings by humans contrive to
deplete snow leopard populations.
"The major threat to the animal is from loss of natural prey due
to high human usage of alpine pastures by livestock. This brings
the snow leopard into conflict with local human interests since
they are forced to prey on livestock. Often, they are poisoned or
killed due to this conflict. Also there is a huge price for the
pelt of the snow leopard in the international market," says Dr.
Y.V. Jhala, one of India's foremost big cat experts.
Sharma also feels that approaches to snow leopard conservation
need to vary from region to region. "It highlights the fact that
landscape/site specific conservation models need to be used for
saving snow leopards," he says.
In 2009, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests launched
the ambitious "Project Snow Leopard" for conserving the population
of the snow leopard in five Indian Himalayan states - Jammu and
Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal
Pradesh. The results have so far been mixed.
"Nothing much has happened on the ground," says Qamar Qureshi,
senior scientist and researcher at the Dehradun-based Wildlife
Institute of India (WII).
However, Sharma strikes an optimistic note: "Project Snow Leopard
aims at holistic conservation of the species while using efficient
monitoring protocols."
Across Asia too, scientists are hopeful that the greatest
difficulty facing the snow leopard might in fact become a boon for
its conservation. The animal's range straddles some of the most
strife-torn conflict zones in the world - Xinjiang, Tibet,
Afghanistan, Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh. But political turmoil
might turn out to be a saviour.
"International boundaries are the best hopes for the survival of
wildlife. Most animals thrive when human use of the land is low or
absent - this being the case on disputed borders. The
Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea is a boon for
wildlife," says Jhala.
Dr. Bilal Habib, research scientist at the WII, told IANS:
"Political instability may have hindered in knowing exact numbers
or other research aspects. But from a conservation perspective,
the turmoil has actually helped wildlife to recover in such
areas."
In the end, feels Sharma, the conservation of the snow leopard is
of absolute importance. "Snow leopards are the thermometers of the
mountain ecosystem. They are also one of the most charismatic cats
adapted to living in these high altitudes. It is important that we
save this species."
(Rajat Ghai can be
contacted at rajat.g@ians.in)
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