With complex, sprawling ranges across the high mountains of South and Central Asia and low population densities, snow leopards are an elusive species. Over the last decade, however, urban centers and communities surrounding their habitats have become increasingly connected, with many more investments in infrastructure on the horizon. How can new linear infrastructure—including roads, railways, and power lines—meet human needs while protecting snow leopards, their prey, and the fragile ecosystems they depend on to survive?
The Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program (GSLEP), an alliance of the 12 countries comprising the snow leopard’s range, formed a working group of scientists and conservationists to create guidance for how infrastructure development can integrate protections for these big cats. Led by the International Snow Leopard Trust, WWF, and the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, the working group presented a guidance document, Guiding the Future of Linear Infrastructure Development in Snow Leopard Landscapes, at the 9th GSLEP Steering Committee Meeting in Cholpon Ata, Kyrgyz Republic, in June 2025, attended by environment ministers or their representatives.
The document provides initial recommendations for how snow leopard range country governments can use avoidance and mitigation techniques to address the impacts of infrastructure development, building on a policy advisory released at the GSLEP Steering Committee Meeting last year. The recommendations reduce risks to local communities, wildlife and ecosystems, and even the infrastructure itself. The document also identifies knowledge gaps that require additional research—for example, understanding what structures and conditions would work for snow leopards and using experimental and field-based studies to design effective and context-specific mitigation measures.
How is infrastructure impacting snow leopard habitat?
Infrastructure serves as the backbone of our societies, delivering basic necessities like the roads we travel on and the electricity that powers our homes and livelihoods. However, linear infrastructure poses an array of threats to snow leopards. Habitat fragmentation, illegal hunting and trade, wildlife-vehicle collisions, and other forms of human-wildlife conflict—along with the introduction of feral dogs, pathogens, and pollutants—are some of the ways in which roads, rail, fencing, and other forms of linear infrastructure cause landscape-level changes that lead to major environmental disturbances. Climate change exacerbates these threats, putting linear infrastructure projects at high ecological and economic risk.
To avoid causing significant problems for biodiversity, particularly wildlife, and harming the communities it is intended to serve, the coming wave of development must be built sustainably and strategically. It must also integrate the values, knowledge, and perspectives of Indigenous peoples and local communities—who are often the people most affected by this development—while being sensitive to sites of cultural importance.
The new guidance is a crucial step in helping policymakers, engineers, and conservationists address the threats to the magnificent snow leopard as the demand for new infrastructure spreads across their habitat. As an umbrella species, snow leopards are an indicator of the health and stability of their ecosystems. Protecting these big cats also protects the region’s biodiversity and natural services—like clean air and water—for local communities and people across the globe.
What’s in the guidance?
The guidance describes initial strategies and interventions at each stage of the infrastructure project lifecycle to implement the mitigation hierarchy—a four-step framework to avoid, manage, and reduce negative environmental impacts and protect and promote biodiversity and ecosystem health. The goal is to establish practices that avoid areas of high snow leopard use and value; mitigate the impact of linear infrastructure where avoidance is not possible or existing structures impede the natural flows of ecosystems; and restore habitats where development has caused disruptions. The recommendations also include maintaining the needs and values of local communities and environmental sustainability at the center of decision-making during infrastructure projects and establishing long-term monitoring to evaluate the effectiveness of the measures.
The document also identifies knowledge gaps that should be addressed in future work. These include mapping all forms of linear infrastructure across snow leopard ranges and establishing stronger baseline data on snow leopard movement and habitat corridors.
By engaging decision-makers and practitioners from all sectors involved in infrastructure development in snow leopard range countries, these measures and future research will not only protect snow leopards and their prey but also support the human communities living in snow leopard ranges and preserve ecosystem services essential to people all over the world.
This article was originally published on worldwildlife.org.
Read the guidelines here.
Camera Trap Photo: © WWF-Pakistan / Gilgit-Baltistan Parks and Wildlife Department
Cover Image: © naturepl.com / Sandesh Kadur / WWF
Figure 2: From Guiding the Future of Linear Infrastructure in Snow Leopard Landscapes, Global Snow Leopard Ecosystem Protection Program (GSLEP).
Figure 4: From Guiding the Future of Linear Infrastructure in Snow Leopard Landscapes, Global Snow Leopard Ecosystem Protection Program (GSLEP).
Mitigation Hierarchy: From Guiding the Future of Linear Infrastructure in Snow Leopard Landscapes, Global Snow Leopard Ecosystem Protection Program (GSLEP).