Snow Leopard Trust Press Releases & Media Stories
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.
Bayarjargal (Bayara) Agvaantseren, the Snow Leopard Trust’s Mongolia Program Director, and head of our partner organization, the Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation, has been awarded the 2019 Goldman Environmental Prize for leading a successful 10 year effort to protect the snow leopard habitat of Tost Mountains.
Snow Leopard Trust Mongolia Director and 2019 Goldman Prize winner Bayara Agvaantseren has taken an unusual path to becoming an environmental hero.
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.
Around 60% of the world’s snow leopard habitat are in China. Yet, in China as in other countries, robust population estimates to guide snow leopard conservation efforts remain scarce. But there are efforts underway to change that – highlighted most recently on International Snow Leopard Day by the release of a report on the status of China’s snow leopards.
Two years after Mongolia’s landmark decision to protect the Tost Mountains as a State Nature Reserve, the last of the mining licenses that had been granted for the region earlier have been revoked.
Most big cats are territorial, with males commonly using larger home ranges than females. But what is driving the spatial behavior of these cats? A new study published in the journal Ecosphere compares spatial data from snow leopards and pumas to better understand what is governing their territorial behavior. Two factors stand out: abundance of prey and access to potential mates. However, the way they work together is not what researchers expected.
US Fish and Wildlife Service and partners in the snow leopard range team up against illegal trade and poaching of these endangered cats. A new database and improved information sharing on snow leopard trafficking will help tackle such crimes.
The value of nature’s goods and services that local people living in Asia’s mountains depend on is several times more than their average household income. In other words, if things such as fresh water and productive grasslands provided by the ecosystem were lost, it would spell ruin for these communities. These are the results of …
Dagina, an eight-year old female snow leopard we’ve known since she was a tiny cub, becomes our latest cat to be tracked with a GPS collar in the world’s most comprehensive study of wild snow leopards.
