Protection of endangered species: Snow leopard

The project “In the footsteps of the snow leopard” – “Wild cats of the southern Siberia”

The Russian Geographical Society has been supporting the project since 2010.

15 April, 2011 – the Russian Geographical Society awarded the State nature reserve “Khakassky” with the grant for the project “In the footsteps of the snow leopard”, winner in the nomination “Environmental activity of the Society”.

Mission of the project: study of the snow leopard population, its number and sex-age structure, and key distribution areas. These data will allow optimizing territorial security of the species and the ecosystem of the southern Siberia as a whole.

The project has developed into the full-scale project “Wild cats of the southern Siberia” in 2012 and focused on study and preservation of rare cat species living in the southern Siberia – the snow leopard (irbis) and the lynx.

The snow leopard is listed on the Red Book of Russia and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as globally Endangered.

The work undergoes in cooperation with the Khakassky nature reserve (the Republic of Khakasiya), the Sayano-Shushensky nature reserve (Krasnoyarsk Krai), the Ubsunur Hollow nature reserve (the Republic of Tuva), zakaznik of federal importance Pozarym (the Republic of Khakasiya) and the A.N. Severtsov Institute of ecology and evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Officers of the nature reserves “Khakassky” and “Sayano-Shushensky” have determined key distribution areas of the snow leopard and conduct monitoring of these areas using trail cameras. Scientists may be certainly said to know each of the snow leopards by sight.