How a community in Pakistan went from capturing snow leopards to protecting them.

How a community in Pakistan went from capturing snow leopards to protecting them.
Scientists and rangers in Mongolia conduct a comprehensive survey of ibex and argali, the snow leopard’s preferred prey species, in the Tost and Noyon mountains. The populations currently look stable and sufficiently large to sustain the area’s snow leopards.
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.
Study finds that snow leopards only use three quarters of the presumed snow leopard habitat in Himachal Pradesh, India, raising questions about the way we map the cat’s distribution.
Data from camera traps and GPS collars show endangered snow leopards dispersing to distant mountain ranges across stretches of deserted steppe, swimming across streams and rivers considered impossible to cross, and freely passing country borders.
A curious snow leopard decides to inspect a camera trap set up by researchers to monitor and study these endangered cats.
The snow leopard is under threat of extinction. But a local grassroots organization in Mongolia is showing a possible path toward the future for this endangered cat.
For almost a decade, Swedish researcher Örjan Johansson has studied the elusive snow leopards of the Gobi Desert. His pioneering work includes equipping 23 individual snow leopards with GPS collars, and publishing groundbreaking papers on how these cats use their habitat or how frequently they kill prey. Last month, Örjan defended the PhD thesis he wrote on this research. In this article, he shares some thoughts about his unique work and what motivates him to do it.
Örjan Johansson’s groundbreaking work on the snow leopard’s biology and behavior has led to novel insights into the spatial needs, predation patterns, and reproduction cycle of this elusive cat. Now, after 8 years of field work, collaring 23 individual snow leopards and spending more than 1,000 nights in the Gobi Desert, this pioneering scientist has received his PhD from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.