Snow leopard claws its way off ‘endangered’ list

Last week the environmental community was happy to report that the snow leopard – that feline predator of Asia’s high mountains – might have clawed its way out of the Endangered Species list up to the next level, Vulnerable. While the normally cautious conservation community was restrained in its elation, it did seem like good news for environmentalists and animal advocates.

It turns out the upgrade in status for the snow leopard may have been as much a statistical adjustment as biological progress, according to Sonoma’s Rodney Jackson, founder and director of the Snow Leopard Conservancy. The classifications come from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and the listings are included in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, which runs from “least concern” to “extinct,” with “endangered” right in the middle.

“In 2008, we used the same assessment of 4,000 adults in the wild as we did this year,” said Jackson. That year an estimated decline of 45 percent led to a population of 2,500 snow leopards in the wild, which placed it in the endangered category.

But this time, using the same population estimate of 4,000 adult snow leopards, the estimated percentage of decline based on field research and camera capture was projected at less than 20 percent, meaning the number of cats in the wild would be a more comfortable 3,200 or so, placing the snow leopard in the vulnerable category.

“Basically, the number of mature adults being above 2,500 and a reduced decline rate of less than 20 percent led to our recommendation that it be reclassified,” said Jackson. The recommendation was made jointly by Panthera, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Snow Leopard Conservancy and other international experts, those most intimately involved in snow leopard research and conservation.

But Jackson and the other scientists stopped short of celebration.

“I think it’s a good sign – it’s not a down-listing, it’s an upgrade in my mind because it means the cat is a little further from the threat of extinction.

“However, I would have to say that unless we keep up and indeed intensify our conservation efforts, it’s going to slip down very quickly and be at high risk. And that’s the last thing that we would want.”

Jackson’s own credentials in snow leopard research include the first-ever radio tracking survey of the charismatic feline predator, beginning in 1982. The smallest of the so-called “big cats,” snow leopards are generally between 60 and 120 pounds and between 3- and 5-feet long, with an unusually long tail and very elusive behavior.

The snow leopard is the apex predator in the world’s greatest mountain chains - the Himalaya, Karakoram, Hindu Kush, Tien Shan, Altai, and other mountain regions of Asia.

Unfortunately, even in these near-inaccessible mountains, the snow leopard faces numerous threats, including illegal trophy-hunting, diminished range, overgrazing and retaliatory killing by herders.

Because traditional livestock-herding communities fear the loss of animals due to predation, they may scare away or even kill snow leopards, in some cases on sight.

“The snow leopard is totally dependent on the good will of local people, whose livelihood is animal husbandry,” said Jackson.

He stressed that local initiatives such as community ranger monitoring efforts and the building of predator-proof corrals to control livestock losses are helping protect the cats from retaliatory killing by farmers and herders in many locations.

He applauded Nepal’s recent change from a monarchy to a federal system of government, which would lead to municipalities at the rural level getting funded from the central treasury, instead of being reliant on funds distributed out of the capital.

“Which opens the door, we believe, for a lot of community organizations to capture some of that income, and do the monitoring and conservation work that local institutions should be doing,” he said.

But still Jackson would like to see research money being put to better use than just counting cats.

“I have to say, our resources should be going into conservation, and not more research,” he said. “Research is a luxury. It doesn’t save species.”

The wildlife biologist, who founded the Snow Leopard Conservancy in 2000 but who began working in the field some 20 years before that, said that conservation agencies and governments “need to step in, and come up with a collaborative solution with villagers – not a top-down one that doesn’t build any ownership and doesn’t strengthen the commitment to better livestock management.”

Even the role of nature tourism can have a positive effect on a species’ chances of survival.

“That’s certainly the case in Ladakh,” he said, pointing to the small Indian state in the northern part of country, sometimes romantically called “Little Tibet.”

“I think the reason we regularly get sightings of snow leopards from 50 yards away there, is because whenever people see the cat, they don’t chase them or harass them anymore. They’ve replaced their livestock income with more secure income from homestays and tourism.”

Even with the reclassification from endangered to vulnerable, Jackson repeats time and again that the cat is far from “saved” in the wild. “The important thing to realize is that vulnerable, endangered and critically endangered are all considered at risk of extinction.”

Because of his lifetime of work, Jackson has again been nominated for the prestigious Indianapolis Prize, and he hopes to hear if he’s the winner of the $250,000 award next year.

The prize is the world’s largest individual monetary award for animal conservation, awarded every other year by the Indianapolis Zoo.

Jackson’s been nominated five times: Will the upgraded status of the snow leopard help his case for 2018?

“Let’s hope so,” he said.

The Snow Leopard Conservancy is located in Sonoma at 75 Boyes Blvd., although it is a place of business and not a museum or public information location. Their website is snowleopardconservancy.org.

Contact Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.