Snow Leopard Blog

Thanks to your vote, the Snow Leopard Trust won the 2011 BBC World Challenge! We received $20,000 to expand our Snow Leopard Enterprises Program into Kyrgyzstan, and we are doing just that! 

Right now, Trust staff members are working hard to re-establish relationships with previous community partners and incorporate new families into the program!

Last August, BBC film makers visited our partner communities in Mongolia to document Snow Leopard Enterprises firsthand. Check out the short film they created featuring our Executive Director, Brad Rutherford, and Country Director, Agvaantseren Bayarjargal!

This January, we saw some incredible movements from the snow leopards in our long-term ecological study.

Aztai spent the first half of the month in the southeastern region of his home range, but later circled the entire area three times! Khavar toured his home range throughout the month as well, and was seen making two separate trips to visit our base camp.

Khashaa is still travelling with her cubs, including M9 who is also wearing a GPS collar, and has covered her entire home range and six cluster sites since late December. Anu travelled extensively in January, visiting six different locations and spending a few days at each. Her travels were very close to those of Lasya, although the never actually overlapped at the same time.

In other news from the field, congratulations to our ungulate expert Kullu for completing his field work! 2We’re excited to share his results with you soon!

Above Photo of Aztai Courtesy of Snow Leopard Trust and Panthera.

Valentine’s Day is February 14th, and snow leopard adoptions make the purr-fect gift! Cub adoptions are on sale now for 20% off and all adoptions come with a FREE CALENDAR throughout the month of February!

Send your mother, brother, neice or nephew any of our snow leopard adoption packages, and we will include an adorable plush toy wearing a Valentine’s bow-tie and a special gift message directly from you!

In honor of the 2012 leap year, we have also put our Leaping Leopard Tee-Shirt on Sale for 20% off! There will be no better shirt to wear on February 29th than this classic white tee. Celebrate that extra day in February in style!

As we head into the 5^th year of our long-term ecological study, six snow leopards are currently wearing GPS tracking collars, including Aztai, the first cat we had ever collared.

Aztai, an older male snow leopard, was seen exploring the southeastern portion of his range just before he returned to the area that overlaps with the incredible snow leopard mother, Khashaa. Khashaa is presently travelling with two cubs in an area close to Aztai’s home range. One cub, named M9, is a young male we fitted with a collar late last year.

Lasya continues to prefer the northern-most region of her range, even though it is not a region typically inhabited by snow leopards. Recently, she did venture through a wide valley that separates two large mountain ranges, but only for a short time.

Anu, another female who is similar is age to Lasya, has been seen regularly patrolling her home range, where she continues to overlap with the male Khavar. Khavar spent 9 days within 1km of our base camp before making an uncharacteristic expedition 8km northeast of his home range where he made a sizeable kill.

After receiving a tremendous amount of support in 2011, we have big plans for this program in the new year. Stay tuned for more updates in February!

Remember that you can also symbolically adopt one of the wild snow leopards in Mongolia!

Photos Courtesy of Snow Leopard Trust/ Panthera. Anu Not Yet Pictured.

Thank you to everyone who has made a gift to the Snow Leopard Trust this year! We are very close to meeting our fundraising goal for 2011, and your contribution will help finance snow leopard conservation throughout next year.

If you haven’t made a donation yet, now is the perfect time! Your donation will allow us to expand snow leopard protection in all five countries where we work!

By giving today, you will be helping us:

• Manage key habitat in a newly gained protected area in Mongolia
• Expand our conservation efforts to five new valleys in Pakistan
• Reintroduce Snow Leopard Enterprises to Kyrgyzstan
• Grow our established programs in India and China

These exciting new opportunities are only possible because of the generous support of people like you! Thank you, and happy New Year from all of us here at the Snow Leopard Trust!