Ecology of the Snow Leopard and the Himalayan Tahr
ECOLOGY OF THE SNOW LEOPARD AND THE HIMALAYAN TAHR IN SAGARMATHA (MT. EVEREST) NATIONAL PARK, NEPAL By SOM B. ALE M. Sc. (Zoology), Tribhuvan University, Nepal, 1992 M. S. (Ecology), University of Tromso, Norway, 1999 THESIS Submitted as partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Biological Sciences in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Chicago, 2007 Chicago, Illinois ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My special thanks go to my supervisor, Joel Brown, whose insight and guidance made this work possible. Thanks are due to my other distinguished committee members: Mary Ashley, Henry Howe, Sandro Lovari, Steve Thompson and Chris Whelan, who were very supportive and constructive while accomplishing my research goals; extra thanks to C.W. and H. H., with whom I wrote Chapters Seven and Eight, respectively. I am grateful to my colleagues in Brown and Howe labs, in particular, A. Golubski and J. Moll, for discussions and their comments during the formative period of my work, and Mosheh Wolf who prepared maps for this work. I would like to thank colleagues and officials at the University of Illinois at Chicago (Biological Sciences, particularly Brown lab and Howe lab), USA, Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (S. Bajimaya, J. Karki), National (erstwhile King Mahendra) Trust for Nature Conservation (S. B. Bajracharaya, G. J. Thapa), Resources Himalaya (P. Yonzon), in Nepal, for their help. I appreciate suggestions on arrays of matters related to this work from R. Jackson (Snow leopard Conservancy, USA), K. B. Shah (Natural History Museum, Nepal) and J. L. Fox (University of Tromos, Norway).
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