Important step towards saving ‘large cats’: Prakash Javadekar launches first national protocol to enumerate snow leopard population

New Delhi, October 23: Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change today launched the first national protocol to enumerate the snow leopard population in the country on the occasion of International Snow Leopard Day. 

 

International Snow Leopard Day is celebrated on October 23 every year to protect and conserve the snow leopards and preserve the beautiful wildlife of the Himalayas. Fourth steering committee meeting of the Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program is being held in Delhi. At the meeting, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar expressed confidence that all range countries can work together and enumerate the number of snow leopards. 

The Minister said that snow leopard range countries must strive to double the snow leopard population in the coming decade. He said it is time to think about the green economy and cross country cooperation for the conservation of wildlife. He also expressed happiness that 2,967 tigers reside in India, which is 77 per cent of the world tiger population. 

Project Snow Leopard is an initiative of the Environment Ministry which aims to safeguard and conserve India's unique natural heritage of high altitude wildlife populations and their habitats by promoting conservation through participatory policies and actions. India is believed to have 400 to 700 snow leopards spread across Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Poaching is a major threat for the snow leopards. Project Snow Leopard was launched in 2009. Currently, it is operational in Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh. 

Snow leopards play a critical role in their ecosystem as top predators. Snow leopard (Panthera uncial) is a large cat native to the mountain ranges of Central and South Asia- including Himalayas, and Russia’s remote Altai mountains. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has downgraded conservation status of snow leopard from ‘endangered’ to ‘vulnerable’. The change in status comes 45 years after snow leopard was first declared endangered in 1972.