With a range spanning some of the planet’s harshest mountain terrain, the snow leopard is one of nature’s most elusive big cats. It lives at densities of roughly one to three animals per 100 square kilometers, earning its reputation as the ghost of the mountains.
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.
Snow leopards are built to hunt prey far larger than themselves. Long-term research in Mongolia is revealing what they eat, how often they hunt, which prey they target, and how those choices shape both snow leopard survival and coexistence with people.
Sue Heim’s love of snow leopards began at the zoo and grew into a lifelong commitment to protect them. By including Snow Leopard Trust in her estate, she found a way to support the research, people, and conservation work she could not carry out in the field herself.
Test your knowledge about the threats snow leopards face and spread the word to help support our conservation efforts to protect the endangered ghost of the mountains. Answers will be revealed when you complete the quiz. You can retake the quiz as many times as you’d like!
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.
