India has 718 snow leopards; most of them live in unprotected areas: Centre

Subject: Environment

Section: Species in news

Context:

Status Report of Snow Leopards in India released on January 30, 2024, indicates that there are 718 snow leopards in the country.

Details:

The report highlights a significant concern: only 34% of their 120,000 square kilometre habitat in India is under legal protection.
This leaves about 70% of their crucial habitat unprotected.
To address this, the report recommends the establishment of a dedicated Snow Leopard Cell at the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun, under the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
- The cell’s goal would be to monitor snow leopard populations over the long term, conduct organized studies, and carry out consistent field surveys.
The report suggests that states and Union territories consider adopting a periodic population estimation approach every four years within the snow leopard range to help identify challenges, address threats, and formulate effective conservation strategies.
- Additionally, it calls for a revised assessment of the number of snow leopards in India, updating the earlier estimate of 400-700, in light of the global estimate of 4,000-7,500 snow leopards.

Counting snow leopards:

The Snow Leopard Population Assessment in India (SPAI), conducted over four years (2019-2023) by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) along with the Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysuru and World Wildlife Fund for Nature-India, focused on assessing snow leopard populations in India.
Researchers installed camera traps at 1,971 locations across the Union Territories of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir and in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh. These traps captured images of 241 unique snow leopards.
The report reveals that the highest number of snow leopards is found in Ladakh (477), followed by Uttarakhand (124), Himachal Pradesh (51), Sikkim (21), and Jammu and Kashmir (9).
Snow leopard occupancy was recorded over 93,392 square kilometres, with an estimated presence of 100,841 square kilometres.
It’s noted that systematic surveys of snow leopards began in the 1980s, initially focusing on the western Himalayas, especially in Ladakh, and later expanding to Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
Until recently, the snow leopard’s range in India was undefined due to a lack of comprehensive nationwide analysis.
Before 2016, only about five per cent of the region in Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh was covered. The latest assessment now covers 80 per cent of the area, compared to 56 per cent in 2016.

About Snow Leopard:

Also known as Ghost of the mountains, acts as an indicator of the health of the mountain ecosystem in which they live, due to their position as the top predator in the food web.
They live at high altitudes in the steep mountains of Central and Southern Asia and an extremely cold climate.
They inhabit the higher Himalayan and trans-Himalayan landscape in the states/union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh.
India is a unique country to have a good presence of 5 big cats, including Snow Leopard. The other 4 are Lion, Tiger, Common Leopard, and Clouded Leopard.
Snow Leopard capital of the world: Hemis, Ladakh.
Threat: Factors that have contributed to the decline in the snow leopard populations include, reduction in prey populations, illegal poaching and increased human population infiltration into the species habitat and illegal trade of wildlife parts and products among others.

Protection:

IUCN Red List- Vulnerable
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)- Appendix I
Convention on Migratory Species (CMS)- Appendix I
- Appendix I includes species threatened with extinction.
Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972- Schedule I
- Schedule I provides absolute protection and offences under this have the highest penalties.

Conservation Efforts Launched by India:

Himal Sanrakshak: It is a community volunteer programme, to protect snow leopards, launched on 23rd October 2020.
In 2019, the First National Protocol was also launched on Snow Leopard Population Assessment which has been very useful for monitoring populations.
SECURE Himalaya: Global Environment Facility (GEF)-United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) funded the project on the conservation of high-altitude biodiversity and reducing the dependency of local communities on the natural ecosystem.
This project is now operational in four snow leopard range states, namely, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Sikkim.
Project Snow Leopard (PSL): It was launched in 2009 to promote an inclusive and participatory approach to conserving snow leopards and their habitat.
Snow Leopard is on the list of 21 critically endangered species for the recovery programme of the Ministry of Environment Forest & Climate Change.
Snow Leopard conservation breeding programme is undertaken at Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park, Darjeeling, West Bengal.

Source: DTE