The activities of humans threaten the survival of snow leopards, making people key to their protection and conservation.

There is a growing market for the bones, skin and organs of snow leopards for traditional Asian medicine.

Villagers with growing domestic herds have moved into snow leopard habitat, crowding out the native prey.

Villagers in the high mountains of Central Asia depend on their flocks of sheep and goats to supply their family’s meat, dairy products and wool. When there is a scarcity of wild prey, snow leopards will turn to this domestic prey which is corralled in roughly built stone pens that are easy for snow leopards to penetrate. Even in predominantly Buddhist communities shepherds have little choice but to resort to retaliatory killing if many of their animals are lost to predation. Sadly, these magnificent cats can be surprisingly easy to kill, cowering in a corner of the livestock corral while being stoned to death.

Herders respond to livestock depredation by demanding compensation from the government. But paying for such loss is not a sustainable solution as it fails to address the root causes. By contrast, predator-proofing corrals is a relatively easy and inexpensive proposition. Other possibilities for reducing depredation include the use of electronic deterrents such as Fox Lights, trained guard dogs, communal shepherding, and preferential access to sheep or goat breeds with well-developed anti-predator traits (native rather than exotic breeds).

Still, it is a fact that livestock predatory losses cannot be entirely eliminated. The real question is how to maintain depredation at a manageable level while helping local people to perceive the greater worth of having a live snow leopard rather than a pelt of one that took their livestock. Apart from reducing depredation, this means increasing local incomes and strengthening community stewardship of alpine ecosystems.

This is the challenge on which the Snow Leopard Conservancy is focusing its efforts, seeking ways of helping local people regain their willingness to co-exist with large predators.