Snow Leopard Survival Strategy Revised Version 2014.1 Snow Leopard Network 1 The designation of geographical entities in this book, and the presentation of the material, do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Snow Leopard Network concerning the legal status of any country, territory, or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Copyright: © 2014 Snow Leopard Network, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N. Suite 325, Seattle, WA 98103. Reproduction of this publication for educational or other non-commercial purposes is authorised without prior written permission from the copyright holder provided the source is fully acknowledged. Reproduction of this publication for resale or other commercial purposes is prohibited without prior written permission of the copyright holder. Citation: Snow Leopard Network (2014). Snow Leopard Survival Strategy. Revised 2014 Version Snow Leopard Network, Seattle, Washington, USA. Website: http://www.snowleopardnetwork.org/ The Snow Leopard Network is a worldwide organization dedicated to facilitating the exchange of information between individuals around the world for the purpose of snow leopard conservation. Our membership includes leading snow leopard experts in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. The main goal of this organization is to implement the Snow Leopard Survival Strategy (SLSS) which offers a comprehensive analysis of the issues facing snow leopard conservation today. Cover photo: Camera-trapped snow leopard. © Snow Leopard Conservancy / Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust. 2 Snow Leopard Survival Strategy Revised Version 2014.1 Compiled by: Rodney Jackson, David Mallon, Charudutt Mishra, Sibylle Noras, Rishi Sharma, Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi. Contributors: Som Ale, Yash Veer Bhatnagar, Paul Buzzard, Mukesh Chalise, Jaffer Ud Din, Katalina Engel, John Farrington, Darla Hillard, Don Hunter, Rodney Jackson, Li Juan, Kubanych Jumabay, Ashiq Ahmed Khan, Oleg Loginov, Tom McCarthy, Tessa McGregor, Aishwarya Maheshwari, Ma Ming, Stefan Michel, Tatjana Rosen Michel, Ranjini Murali, Wali Modaqiq, Tsewang Namgail, Muhammad Ali Nawaz, Mikhail Paltsyn, Upendra Mani Pradhan, Philip Riordan, S Sathyakumar, George Schaller, Karan Shah, Koustubh Sharma, Rinjan Shrestha, Anthony Simms, Navinder Singh, Kamal Thapa, Pranav Trivedi, Pauline Verheij, Dajun Wang, Per Wegge, Lingyun Xiao, Peter Zahler. Copy editing: Sibylle Noras. Technology and communications: Rana Bayrakcismith, Jeff Brown, Heather Hemmingmoore, Sibylle Noras, Anush Shetty. 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Review of Current Status Chapter 3: Threats to Snow Leopards, their Prey and Ecosystems Chapter 4: Livestock Competition, Rangeland and Prey Declines Chapter 5: Livestock Depredation Chapter 6: Illegal Trade Chapter 7: Climate Change Chapter 8: Large-scale Infrastructure, Mining and Linear Barriers Chapter 9: Conservation Actions Chapter 10: Protected Areas Chapter 11: Transboundary Cooperation Chapter 12: Ecosystem Services and Economic Valuation of Snow Leopards and Their Mountain Ecosystem Chapter 13: Snow Leopard Conservation through Hunting of Prey Species Chapter 14: Estimating Snow Leopard and Prey Populations and Monitoring Trends Appendix 1: List of completed and ongoing studies which have estimated snow leopard populations using camera trapping and fecal genetics Appendix 2: Threats table compiled as part of the GSLEP process. Appendix 3: Protected areas (PA) with confirmed or potential snow leopard occurrence Appendix 4. List of Protected Areas (PAs) occurring along international borders: 4 Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1. The Snow Leopard Panthera uncia The iconic snow leopard is the least known of the ‘big cats’ due to its elusive nature, secretive habits and the remote and challenging terrain it inhabits. As an apex predator, its survival depends on healthy populations of mountain ungulates, the major prey; these in turn are dependent on the availability of good-quality rangeland minimally degraded by concurrent use from livestock and humans. The snow leopard has a large home range size, so viable populations can only be secured across large landscapes. The snow leopard therefore represents the ideal flagship and umbrella species for the mountain ecosystems of Asia. Snow leopards share their range with pastoral communities who also require healthy rangelands to sustain their livestock and livelihoods. Moreover, these high altitude mountains and plateaus provide invaluable ecosystem services through carbon storage in peat lands and grasslands, and serve as Asia’s ‘water towers’, providing fresh water for hundreds of millions of people living downstream in Central, East and South Asia. 1.2. The Snow Leopard Survival Strategy (SLSS) SLSSS was developed to summarize current knowledge on the distribution, status and biology of the snow leopard, to consolidate the knowledge of snow leopard researchers and conservationists worldwide, to identify the key threats to their survival, review the existing state of research and conservation programs, and identify priorities for action. The specific goals of SLSS are to: • Assess and prioritize threats to snow leopard across their range. • Define and prioritize appropriate conservation, education, and policy measures to alleviate threats. • Prioritize topics for snow leopard research and identify viable and preferred research methods. The Snow Leopard Trust initiated the SLSS process in February 2001 with a survey of specialists. The survey results were made available on a website and discussed via an email group. This stage was followed by the Snow Leopard Survival Summit, held in Seattle, USA, 21-26 May 2002, and attended by 58 specialists, including representatives from the range states, to discuss and refine the Strategy. The end product was the original version of SLSS (McCarthy & Chapron 2003). The Summit also established the Snow Leopard Network (SLN) a global alliance of more than 500 professionals and nearly 50 institutions involved in snow leopard conservation. SLN later produced a summary and partially revised version (Mallon 2007) in English, Chinese, Mongolian and Russian. All earlier versions are available on the SLN website (www.snowleopardnetwork.org). Since then, many conservation programs have been initiated, field surveys have expanded across snow leopard range, new protected areas have been established, and major advances in research technology have occurred. Among these are great improvements in camera trap technology, GPS satellite collars, and vastly more refined techniques of genetic analysis that allow the identification of individual snow leopards from fecal DNA. These have generated a large amount of new information and have facilitated research as well as conservation and management. However, the conservation of the snow leopard, its prey and habitat is contingent upon the degree to which such information is shared, reviewed or constructively evaluated and 5 advanced, along with sufficient human and financial resources for advancing our understanding of the species’ ecology and conservation priorities. At the same time, the pace of rural development has increased, opening up previously remote parts of snow leopard range; livestock grazing has expanded and intensified, and new factors have emerged that may threaten the future of snow leopards and their habitat, notably increased resource exploitation and climate change – all of which have created new challenges for snow leopard conservation. This was therefore deemed the appropriate time for SLN to update SLSS. The period of updating coincided with the Global Snow Leopard & Ecosystem Protection Program (GSLEP), a new initiative launched in 2012 by President Alamazbek Atambaev and the government of the Kyrgyz Republic and modelled on the Global Tiger Initiative. The GSLEP seeks to bring together governments of snow leopard range countries to collectively recognize the threats to snow leopards and commit to coordinated national and international action. The GSLEP’s Goal is to identify and secure 20 snow leopard landscapes by the year 2020. The foundation of the process is a set of 12 National Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Priorities (NSLEP) developed by each range country government. For further details, including access to the global and national plans released at the Summit Workshop in Bishkek in October 2013, see http://en.akilibirs.com. The GSLEP and revised SLSS have been developed in parallel and the two products are intended to be complementary, with GSLEP organized around a policy-level and government-focused agenda and SLSS a wider, more technical document targeting researchers, conservationists and wildlife or protected area managers in the government and public sectors. There is naturally some overlap in thematic content, since several individual and institutional members of SLN also contributed to the development of the GSLEP along with providing input and initial reviews of the country-based NSLEPs. SLSS must remain on top of all the rapid developments so that the conservation community is equipped with the information it needs to respond to ongoing changes in a manner that assures the continued conservation of snow leopards, their prey and habitat. The large volume of new information available and speed with which it is distributed on new media soon render any static document outdated and waiting for 10-year updates is impractical. It is with this critical need in mind that the 2014