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The mys­te­ri­ous snow leop­ard has been deliv­ered a piece of good news. The Red List clas­si­fi­ca­tion from the Inter­na­tional Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature — IUCN — improves the con­ser­va­tion sta­tus of the big cat from “Endan­gered” to “Vul­ner­a­ble.” As these iconic sym­bols of Asia’s great moun­tain wilder­ness still face numer­ous threats, many rapidly grow­ing, in their high moun­tain home, this down-​listing raised a con­tro­versy among snow leop­ard con­ser­va­tion­ists. In a state­ment the Snow Leop­ard Trust (SLT), a lead­ing con­ser­va­tion organ­i­sa­tion work­ing to pro­tect this cat, opposes the IUCN’s deci­sion to change the snow leopard’s Red List sta­tus from ‘Endan­gered’ to ‘Vulnerable’.

Snow leop­ard in Mon­go­lia.
Image credit SLCF Mon­go­lia /​Snow Leop­ard Trust

The snow leop­ard (Pan­thera uncia) was listed as Endan­gered by the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species™ — the glob­ally accepted, inter­na­tional stan­dard for assess­ing extinc­tion risk — for each 5 – 10 year assess­ment since its ini­tial list­ing in 1972. The change in sta­tus came after a three-​year assess­ment process by five inter­na­tional experts includ­ing sci­en­tists from acad­e­mia and from Pan­thera, Snow Leop­ard Con­ser­vancy, and Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety (WCS), organ­i­sa­tions active in snow leop­ard con­ser­va­tion. The assess­ment was then reviewed and approved by eight inter­na­tional felid and Red List assess­ments experts, the IUCN Global Mam­mal Assess­ment team, and the cen­tral Red List Unit.

Dr. Tom McCarthy, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Panthera’s Snow Leop­ard Pro­gram and a mem­ber of the assess­ment team, said, “To be con­sid­ered ‘Endan­gered,’ there must be less than 2,500 mature snow leop­ards and they must be expe­ri­enc­ing a high rate of decline. Both are now con­sid­ered extremely unlikely, which is the good news, but it does not mean that snow leop­ards are ‘safe’ or that now is a time to celebrate.”

Dr. Tom McCarthy, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Panthera’s Snow Leop­ard Program

The assess­ment cites a num­ber of recent stud­ies that used more sci­en­tif­i­cally robust meth­ods than in the past and which sug­gest snow leop­ard num­bers are likely higher than pre­vi­ously thought. Dr. Rod­ney Jack­son, Founder and Direc­tor of the Snow Leop­ard Con­ser­vancy (SLC) and another mem­ber of the assess­ment team, said, “Even with such pos­i­tive sup­port­ive infor­ma­tion, the assess­ment team took a con­ser­v­a­tive approach, includ­ing using the low­est esti­mated global pop­u­la­tion size of 4,000 when deter­min­ing if the Endan­gered thresh­old could be met.”

One of the rea­sons that snow leop­ard sta­tus has improved is greatly increased con­ser­va­tion efforts. Dr. David Mal­lon, snow leop­ard expert and mem­ber of the assess­ment team, points out that in the last few decades there has been a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the num­ber of pro­tected areas within the snow leop­ard range. The species range is exten­sive, and cov­ers more than 1.8 mil­lion km² of moun­tain habi­tat in 12 range coun­tries across Asia. Dr. Jack­son stressed that local ini­tia­tives such as com­mu­nity ranger mon­i­tor­ing efforts and the build­ing of predator-​proof cor­rals to con­trol con­flict over live­stock losses are help­ing to pro­tect the cats from retal­ia­tory killing in many locations.

The snow leop­ard is the top preda­tor of the world’s great­est moun­tain chains — the Himalayas, 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.

“Con­tin­u­ing threats include poach­ing for its thick fur and over­hunt­ing of its wild prey,” said Peter Zahler, Coor­di­na­tor of the WCS Snow Leop­ard Pro­gram and also on the assess­ment team. “There is also an increas­ing num­ber of domes­tic live­stock raised by local peo­ple in these high moun­tains that degrades the del­i­cate grass­lands, dis­turbs wild sheep and goats and dri­ves them into less pro­duc­tive habi­tats.” Zahler pointed out that this can also lead to dis­ease out­breaks in wild sheep and goats due to trans­mis­sion of novel pathogens from their domes­tic coun­ter­parts. “The loss of wild prey can lead to attacks on domes­tic stock, which itself can lead to retal­ia­tory killing of snow leop­ards by local shep­herds,” Zahler said.

Rare footage of wild snow leop­ards in Tost, Mon­go­lia.
This footage, taken by remote-​sensor research cam­eras, reveals a vibrant pop­u­la­tion of these endan­gered cats in the remote Tost moun­tain range in Mongolia’s South Gobi province — includ­ing a mother with two cubs.

Zahler added, “It is impor­tant that a change in sta­tus is not mis­in­ter­preted — this change does not mean that the snow leop­ard has been ‘saved’ and efforts on its behalf can stop. The IUCN’s Vul­ner­a­ble sta­tus means a species is still vul­ner­a­ble to extinc­tion, and the snow leop­ard pop­u­la­tion is still believed to be in decline and fac­ing a high risk of extinc­tion. Threats — poach­ing, habi­tat destruc­tion, loss of prey species — still exist and new threats such as roads, bor­der fences, and cli­mate change, are increas­ing. So con­ser­va­tion actions must con­tinue and be increased to con­serve the species.”

The Snow Leop­ard Trust agrees with the assess­ment that major threats still exist, and adds one that, strangely enough, has been omit­ted by the assess­ment team — cli­mate change. SLT states that the threats to snow leop­ard sur­vival are increas­ing still, includ­ing cli­mate change that threat­ens two-​thirds of snow leop­ard habi­tat. Fur­ther to this con­ser­va­tion­ists at SLT believe the best avail­able sci­ence does not jus­tify the down-​listing, and that it could have seri­ous con­se­quences for the species.

The IUCNs guide­lines make it clear that any sta­tus assess­ment should fol­low a pre­cau­tion­ary approach. If the best avail­able data aren’t con­clu­sive, no down-​listing should be done. In the case of the snow leop­ard, less than 2% of the species’ range has ever been sam­pled for abun­dance using reli­able tech­niques, and those data are biased toward high-​density areas. The new assess­ment behind the sta­tus change of the snow leop­ard does not improve on this data and appears to use method­olo­gies — such as ask­ing peo­ple how many snow leop­ards they think exist in any area — that are not rec­og­nized as sci­en­tif­i­cally valid for esti­mat­ing pop­u­la­tions. In addi­tion, demo­graphic mod­el­ling based on the lim­ited solid data that is avail­able actu­ally showed results in favour of an Endan­gered listing.

There­fore SLT thinks the sta­tus change is unjus­ti­fied and detri­men­tal to the con­ser­va­tion of the snow leopard.

(Source: WCS press release, 14.09.2017; SLT news release, 14.09.2017)