Conservation Programs
Snow leopards live in vast home ranges across the high mountains of Asia. While securing their critical habitats through protected areas is important, it isn’t enough.
Protected areas have often neglected the rights and well-being of human populations already living there. Furthermore, snow leopards are landscape species, requiring huge areas. Typically, individual snow leopards move well beyond protected area boundaries, and they must be conserved on lands that are also used by people.
To safeguard these endangered cats, we partner with communities of local and indigenous peoples living across this vast, mountainous landscape. Our conservation approach promotes ethical ways for snow leopards and people to coexist while protecting their shared habitat.
Our partner communities actively protect between 70,000 and 150,000 sq. km of snow leopard habitat. 159 communities are engaged in some or all of the following snow leopard-friendly conservation programs.
Drawing from more than two decades of real-life experience as well as from various disciplines such as ecology, sociology, social psychology and negotiation theory, we've developed a set of eight broad principles for engaging with communities for the purpose of wildlife conservation.
Snow Leopard Enterprises (SLE) is an award-winning, conservation-focused handicrafts brand that helps create sustainable economic opportunities for women and families living in snow leopard habitat. This women-led initiative promotes the production and sale of handmade products to augment livelihoods. Participating communities are also actively involved in conservation actions to protect snow leopards.
Our community-led livestock insurance program helps rural communities reduce the economic impact of snow leopard predation by providing compensation for lost animals through a shared insurance fund. This initiative serves as a safety net for herders, enabling them to better cope with occasional predation and ultimately promoting coexistence with snow leopards and other predators.
Some herder families in snow leopard habitat can lose up to five times more livestock to diseases than predation. The livestock vaccination and ecosystem health program helps build healthier herds by offering vaccines and animal husbandry training in snow leopard communities. This helps herders better withstand livelihood risks and reduces negative attitudes towards snow leopards.
Livestock losses to predation are part of life for many herding communities. Desperate herders sometimes retaliate against snow leopards and other predators by killing them. Our collaborative predator-proof corral initiative breaks this cycle by fortifying corrals to protect livestock. These improved corrals can significantly reduce predation incidents and safeguard household livelihoods.
Citizen-Ranger Wildlife Protection
Illegal hunting continues to threaten snow leopards and their prey species in large parts of their range. Committed wildlife rangers are crucial to protecting this precious biodiversity. Our Citizen-Ranger Wildlife Protection Program trains, celebrates and honors those who serve on the frontlines of conservation. It helps support these defenders of nature and encourages local communities to work with them to protect their native wildlife.
Our conservation education initiatives are designed to create awareness about the value of nature and inspire positive attitudes toward wildlife. These programs include children’s eco-camps, annual Snow Leopard Day celebrations, conservation newsletters for herder communities and other local stakeholders and educational materials for schools, including lectures, videos, posters and environmental WhatsApp groups for teachers and students.