Pics: Madhu Chetri
Nepali scientist Madhu Chetri was collecting samples of snow leopard scat in Manang to analyse their prey when he came face to face with this female snow leopard feeding on a bharal kill.
Being at the top of the food chain in the mountains, snow leopards are an important indicator not only of the health of their Himalayan habitat, but also of human livelihoods.
But the endangered cat is in the IUCN Red List because of poaching, habitat destruction and climate change. It is facing an increasingly uphill struggle against extinction.
Nepal has between 300-500 snow leopards left in the world, and this is the fourth largest population after China, Mongolia and India. The animal’s range stretch across 12 Asian countries.
A growing human population and demand for natural resources is putting immense pressure on the snow leopard’s fragile habitat. Conflict between the snow leopard, its prey, nomadic herders and mountain communities has added to existing threats like poaching and climate change.
Pic: Morten Odden
Madhu Chetri spent six months in the mountains collecting sample droppings of snow leopards, here he poses with the skull and horns of a Tibetan sheep killed by a Himalayan wolf in Upper Mustang at 4,800m.
Nepali scientist Madhu Chetri and colleagues at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences recently spent nearly six months in the Nepal Himalaya collecting snow leopard droppings to analyse their prey, and to find clues about human impact on their habitat.
Chetri and his team published their findings in the journal PLOS ONE about the food habits of the rare cats.
“Our findings could could provide effective guidance for building future conservation strategies for the species,” Chetri told Nepali Times.
Watch a video of snow leopards in their natural habitat made by Tashi Ghale
The team collected scat samples of the snow leopard and its important sympatric predator of livestock, the Himalayan wolf, for DNA analysis to find out about their diet. The samples were sourced from 26 representative grids above 3,000m in altitude in an area covering 5,000 sq km of the Annapurna
and Manasalu
Conservation Areas above 3,000m.
A snow leopard's favourite food is bharal, which it hunts in steep terrain.
By the end of their field work, they had collected 800 scat samples of snow leopards and wolves. The results showed that snow leopards preferred cliff-dwelling ungulates like the bharal (Himalayan blue sheep) and Himalayan tahr.
More than half the droppings had traces of the two prey. A significant 27 per cent of the prey of the snow leopard was made up of domestic animals like goat, horse, sheep, yak and lulu cow.
A quarter of the diet of Himalayan wolves was also made up of livestock, with horses being the most favourite. Remains of livestock occurred twice as frequently in scat of males as females.
“We now have a better understanding of the relationship between domestic livestock and the snow leopard and their consequences on the livelihood of the local communities,” said Chetri, who is now trying to evaluate the economic impact of snow leopard kills and finding solutions to ensure the long-term survival of the big cats in the Himalaya.
A female snow leopard feeding on a bharal.
During his research, Chetri has had some hair-raising experiences as he came face-to-face with a snow leopard . It was on his last day in the field in Manang where he was monitoring and guarding a kill of a snow leopard from Himalayan griffons. He remembers bravely looking the snow leopard in the eye, and saying in soothing Nepali: “I am not your enemy, I won’t harm you, I am a friend trying to help you.” Chetri said it was the most mesmerizing experience in his 15 years spent researching snow leopards in the mountains.
Researchers also say there is also an urgent need for research into wildlife diseases to prevent cats being infected with disease from other wildlife and livestock sharing the same habitat, as happened to the Saiga antelopes in Mongolia recently.
The Nepal Trust for Nature Conservation is promoting traditional predator-proof corrals and solar powered electric fences to save the livestock of pastoral herding communities.
The worldwide trade of the snow leopards is totally banned by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) putting it in Appendix I. Despite this, up to 450 Snow leopards have been poached annually since 2008 alone. This could be an underestimation because many killings by poachers in remote areas go unreported.
Nepal recently released a Snow Leopard Conservation Action Plan (2017-2021) which will guide conservation efforts for the next five years. The research by Chetri’s team could go a long way in protecting this magnificent cat for future generations.
@SonamTac