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.
When Ranger Aibek* received a tip that someone was planning to sell a snow leopard skin at a local market in Kyrgyzstan’s Talas region, he knew time was of the essence. Snow leopards are among the world’s most endangered big cats, and a tip like this does not stay useful for long. Sellers move fast, and evidence disappears.
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 enchantment of such a majestic creature living among us never dies down.”
Seven snow leopards. Seven stories unfolding across the mountains of Mongolia. GPS collaring gives our researchers a rare window into the lives of these elusive cats, revealing how they use habitat, raise their young, and interact with each other and their prey. That knowledge directly shapes our conservation strategies to protect them. Here’s what they’ve been up to lately.
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 the Snow Leopard Foundation (SLF) is finding new ways to “listen” to nature’s hidden signals, while also relying on local guardians who keep a watchful eye on the ground.
Spring field season is underway in Mongolia’s Tost Mountains, and our research team is as busy as ever. They’ve collared two new snow leopards, the ibex are still elusive and a mystery two years in the making has been solved. Read Dr. Örjan Johansson’s dispatches from base camp below.
The high-altitude valleys where snow leopards live are also home to farming communities with deep roots in the land. An award-winning study, co-authored by Kulbhushansingh Suryawansh, Director of our India program, and team members from the India program, examines what’s at stake as traditional crops disappear. Read on to find out what a 3,000-year-old pea can teach us about food sovereignty and climate resilience.
In one of Mongolia’s most spectacular landscapes, a vulnerable species is thriving. But for how long depends on decisions being made right now. In September 2025, a team of researchers and rangers set out across the vast expanse of the South Gobi to count goitered gazelles. The mission had two goals: to gather reliable data on gazelle populations and to train local rangers in modern survey techniques.
Deep in the high Himalayas, camera traps set up to track snow leopards have been quietly capturing something else as well, a cast of brilliantly colored, rarely seen birds that may be just as important to the mountain ecosystem. Researcher Adithi Rao explains what happened when curiosity led her team to take a closer look at what else was showing up in the frame
Those words, spoken by a woman living in the heart of snow leopard country in Pakistan, capture something that has been unfolding across mountain communities for decades. Since Snow Leopard Enterprises (SLE) first launched in Mongolia in 1998, a growing number of people have found that protecting snow leopards and building a better life for their families are not competing goals. They are the same goal.
