The newsletter of Snow Leopard Trust I Fall 2016

Snow Leopard Tracks is published four times per year. Copyright © 2016 by Snow Leopard Trust.

The Whitley Award, sometimes referred to as the ‘Green Oscars,’ is one of the most prestigious prizes in the world of nature conservation. In recognition for his incredible work with snow leopards in northern Pakistan, our very own Dr. Muhammad Ali Nawaz was honored to be among the few selected for year’s awards. In April, Ali was presented with the award in a ceremony presided by HRH The Princess Royal at the Royal Geological Society in London.

Ali is Director of Snow Leopard Foundation Pakistan, and serves as the Pakistan Program Director for Snow Leopard Trust. He also holds a faculty position in the Department of Animal Sciences at the renowned Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad.

Pakistan’s northern mountains currently support up to 420 snow leopards. With passion and vision, Ali is tackling threats—including poaching, habitat degradation, declining natural prey, and retribution killing by herders—that have pushed these cats toward a status of Critically Endangered in Pakistan. Ali’s focus is to accelerate conservation in important regions, including the Pamir and Karakoram Mountains, some of the most expansive mountain complexes in the world (see following article). He has already successfully introduced programs like livestock vaccination to help herder communities buffer against livestock losses and increase tolerance towards predators. Explains Ali, “The vaccination program brings livestock mortality down by 50-80%, which

means healthier and more plentiful livestock. We see an increase in family income by at least 30% in one year for participating families.”

Now Ali plans to work on an even broader scale. “I believe, in order to make a big difference to snow leopard conservation in Pakistan, we need to focus on a larger landscape level than is currently being protected. And right now, there is incredible momentum to support Protected Areas and the communities surrounding them,” he

DR. ALI NAWAZ HONORED WITH ‘GREEN OSCAR’ FOR CONSERVATION

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Dr. Ali Nawaz has big plans for accelerating snow leopard conservation in northern Pakistan, home to the wild snow leopards photographed here. The prestigious Whitley Award will allow his efforts to reach across a 25,000 square kilometer landscape.

Continued inside

Central Karakoram National Park, in the Gilgit-Baltistan Province of northern Pakistan, is one of the most dramatic landscapes on earth. Home to four of the world’s fourteen tallest peaks, including K2, as well as the Biafo-Hisper glacier system (one of the longest of its kind), the park’s rugged and remote terrain is prime snow leopard habitat.

Specifically, two areas inside the park, Hisper Valley and adjacent Hoper Valley, have long been considered particularly good snow leopard habitat—but the cat’s presence has never been scientifically confirmed in the area until now. Led by Snow Leopard Foundation’s (SLF) Senior Research Associate, Hussain Ali, scientists recently confirmed the presence of at least four snow leopards, using data from research camera images.

“We knew that the Hoper and Hisper Valleys had tremendous potential for wildlife, and that the rugged terrain offered an ideal habitat for snow leopards,” says Hussein. “We’ve also had lots of reports from the local communities about livestock predation in the past, so we wanted to get a better sense of the snow leopard population in the area.”

This past winter, Hussein and his team braved heavy snowfall and risk

of rockslides and avalanches to install a total of thirty-eight remote-sensor cameras in the two valleys. The team left the research cameras in the field for two months in an attempt to capture images of the elusive snow leopard and other fauna.

After enduring the elements for a second time to recover the cameras, the team quickly realized the results were worth the hard work and the wait! “We had snow leopard pictures on ten of our cameras, and were able to identify four individuals—the first photo evidence of the cat’s presence in Central Karakoram National Park,” Hussain says. The cameras also captured images of red fox, stone marten, weasels, pikas, and cape hares.

Says Jaffar Ud Din, Assistant Director of SLF, “the new photos will not only help us better understand the behavior and needs of snow leopards but will also promote stewardship for local wildlife among the community.” Jaffar is hopeful about the future of conservation in the area: “We will further extend our conservation and education programs in neighboring Hoper Valley to ensure peaceful coexistence of wildlife and local people across the larger landscape with the march of time.”

The SLF team thanks the Sabin Snow Leopard Grants Program, the Gilgit-Baltistan Wildlife Department, and the local communities of Hisper and Hoper Valleys for their tremendous support.

First-ever scientific evidence of snow leopards in remote region of Pakistan

This wild snow leopard, photographed last winter, confirms the presence of snow leopards in Pakistan’s Central Karakoram National Park—the first scientific evidence of cats in this area.

of communities and carnivores. This will be Pakistan’s first landscape-level strategy for snow leopard conservation and will be used as a model to guide future conservation planning in the country.

Ali is the second Snow Leopard Trust team member to be recognized with a Whitley Award; our Science and

says. With his Whitley Award prize, which includes £35,000 in project funding, Ali will bring together herder communities, NGOs, and government in a unified effort to develop a strategy for 25,000 square kilometers of the Pamir-Karakoram habitat. His approach will include training wildlife managers, while also engaging with 6,000 herders to enable co-existence

Conservation Director, Dr. Charu Mishra, won the prestigious prize in 2005. The Whitley Fund for Nature has since been a major partner in our efforts to protect the endangered snow leopard, and is currently supporting work across the cat’s range through Partnership Funding by Fondation Segré.

NAWAZ HONORED WITH ‘GREEN OSCAR’ continued

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In June, in the heart of the newly designated Tost Nature Reserve in Mongolia, forty local school children had an unforgettable nature experi-ence. They spent five days in an outdoor eco-camp, where they had fun learning about the plants and animals around them.

“The eco-camps are designed to foster an appreciation and a sense of stew-ardship for their environment among children,” says Nadia Mijiddorj, our Conservation and Education Manager in Mongolia.

To experience their surroundings with all five senses, children smell herbs, touch rocks, and look at grasses and flowers through a magnifying glass. In the evening, they listen to the sounds of nature.

This year, children enjoyed stunning research camera pictures of the elusive ‘Ghost of the Mountain’—the first time many of them had laid eyes on a snow leopard. They learned about the threats that the snow leopard is facing, and engaged in role play exercises to help them understand what might be done to lessen herder/snow leopard conflicts. “Many of these kids have relatives who herd sheep and goats, so they think of the snow leopard as a predator that can kill livestock. In camp, we try to show the children the snow leopard’s point of view,” says Nadia. “Then, the kids come up with ideas to help people coexist with wildlife more peacefully.”

In one group, the children worked through a scenario in which a herder who used to hunt ibex soon notices the ibex have disappeared and snow leopards are appearing around his livestock corral. One of the campers got to play the herder’s son, and explain to his father, “Papa, the snow leopard comes around because it needs to eat and all the ibex are gone!” The exercise concluded when the father agreed to stop hunting ibex.

At the culmination of the camp, a 13-year-old girl named Tuguldur Iderjavkhlan wrote some powerful words in her journal that illustrate the impact the camps are having on the minds of these future conservationists: “My dream is to conserve all the living things on earth. Many strangers kill our wildlife for greed and if I could, I would stop illegal hunting and unsus-tainable use of plants.”

“My dream is to conserve all living things on earth”

Thank you so much for supporting our ongoing research and conservation initiatives in the newly designated Tost Nature Reserve in Mongolia. You’re making it possible for us to educate Tost’s next generation of conservation leaders through eco-camps. Your outstanding support also allows us to work with reserve rangers and surrounding communities.

Special thanks to the following: David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, Disney Conservation Fund, Fund a Project donors, Partnership Funding by Fondation Segré managed by Whitley Fund for Nature, and La Passerelle Conservation and Parc Animalier d’Auvergne.

T H A N K Y O U !

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Snow Leopard Trust4649 Sunnyside Ave N, Suite 325Seattle, WA 98103-6955 USA

206-632-2421info@snowleopard.orgwww.snowleopard.org

Fall 2016

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Permit No 1445

IN THIS ISSUE:Pakistan Director wins prestigious conservation prize

First-ever snow leopard photographs in remote region of PakistanFun and learning at eco-camps in Mongolia • New Executive Director for Snow Leopard Trust

From the desk of Michael Despines, Snow Leopard Trust’s new Executive DirectorShhh, not too loud, you might wake the new guy. The new guy is me, and apparently I am the new Executive Director. I must be sleeping, as this job is a dream come true. I have always been crazy about animals (as my numerous childhood stuffed animals can attest). Working with the Trust allows me to meld my personal passion for the natural world (www.despines.com) and my deep commitment and experience as a non-profit leader, strategist, and advocate focused on sustainable solutions for communities around the world. I am already dazzled by

the piercing intelligence and tireless commitment of our staff, partners, and supporters from around the globe dedicated to protecting the snow leopard. I am also humbled by the passion and tremendous generosity of our donors and supporters—after

writing this I visited with Ina and Theo, two teenagers from Seattle who held a bake sale to raise funds for the Trust. Whoopie pies and snow leopard conservation—who could ask for more? Don’t wake me up…