Great news for snow leopards and local herding communities: the Mongolian government has decided to expand the Tost Nature Reserve in the country’s South Gobi province by 150 km2. In doing so, the government also revoked a mining license that had threatened a water source that is critical for people and wildlife.
Follow our team on a trip to our Kyrgyz partner community of Ak Shiyrak, high up in the snow leopard habitat of the Central Tian Shan mountains.
Bayara Agvaantseren received the 2019 Goldman Environmental Prize for her role in protecting the snow leopard stronghold of Tost from mining. But the Snow Leopard Trust’s Mongolia Program Director is quick to point out that the success was not hers alone, but rather the result of an extraordinary team effort.
Tenzin Thinley, our Field Coordinator in Spiti, India, shares a beautiful conservation story of loss and hope. It illustrates the struggles faced by communities in snow leopard habitat and a possible solution to the conflicts that threaten these cats.
Site of the world’s most comprehensive snow leopard study, critical link in a network of Protected Areas and home to more than a dozen of these elusive cats – Mongolia’s Tost Mountains are a unique and irreplaceable snow leopard stronghold.
Three years after her landmark victory for snow leopards, our Mongolia Program Director Bayara Agvaantseren narrates how the only Protected Area in the world dedicated exclusively to these cats was created against all odds.
Ten wildlife rangers from various protected areas and provinces of Kyrgyzstan were recognized and rewarded for outstanding service at the annual Ranger Rewards Ceremony in Bishkek on World Wildlife Day. The total reward sum was 115,000 Kyrgyz Som (ca. 1,650 US$). The ten honored rangers had successfully apprehended and brought to justice poachers or illegal …
Supported by small grants from Snow Leopard Trust donors, local community members in Mongolia put their own conservation ideas into action.
To protect endangered wildlife, we need to find ways to turn local communities into allies, rather than alienating them. Here’s how it can work.
Help a Mongolian herder woman and snow leopard defender win a conservation prize for her important work.
