Russia for the first during the history of snow leopard conservation calls for using the innovative methodology in all snow leopard range countries. The unified approach to monitoring and processing of data on snow leopard numbers and distribution will contribute to collecting the reliable and comparable data worldwide.

The new snow leopard monitoring programme was presented at the International Snow Leopard and Ecosytems Forum in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The Forum brought together high-level delegates and international media to discuss solutions to secure a future for snow leopards. The summit aims to strengthen the 12 range countries’ ongoing efforts to protect the snow leopard and galvanize international support for their ambitious plan of securing 20 snow leopard landscapes by the year 2020.

All 12 snow leoaprd range countries signed the Bishkek Declaration 2017 to call upon worldwide snow leoaprd conservation. Globally WWF steps forward include: supporting the range states to come up with climate-smart snow leopard landscape plans; prioritizing snow leopards as a fundraising potential opportunity; and engaging actively in the 2018 Snow Leopard Forum, proposed to be hosted in China.

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Marco Lambertini, Director General of WWF International.

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Igor Chestin, Director of WWF Russia (right), Irina Fominykh Department of International Cooperation, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, of Russian Federation (left) and the experts of WWF Altai-Sayan Project.

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Bollywood actress and ardent animal lover Dia Mirza (India) handles over 200.000 signatures from all over the world under the petition to protect snow leoprd to the summit organizers.

Alexander Karnaukhov, Senior Coordinator, WWF Altai-Sayan Programme said:

WWF Russia calls upon all countries to apply the developed approach. At the moment the snow leopard remains one of the most unexplored species of big cats on Earth due to the number of reasons. Different countries have different methods of field survey, data collecting and information processing. It is one of the reasons why the data on snow leopard population numbers and distribution worldwide is hard to compare. Each country has its own peculiarities and can adopt the methodology but not the approach. The unified approach will contribute a lot to conservation and secure tracking the population dynamics and assessing the conservation efforts.

The new snow leopard monitoring programme was developed by WWF Russia experts in partnership with New York University and the contribution of Rodney Jackson, the Director of Snow Leopard Conservancy.

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The statue brought to the summit by WWF-Mongolia of real-sized snow leopard cub made of 12 dismantled traps.

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Dr. Rodney Jackson, Director of Snow Leopard Conservancy added:

New snow leopard monitoring programme will directly address the concern stated in the official Bishkek Declaration about the gap in knowledge about snow leopard status and population. It proposes a scientifically based sound initiative to achieving snow leopard world population assessment.

The programme was presented at the International Snow Leopard Summit and Ecosystem Forum, hold in Bishkek, Republic of Kyrgyzstan. At the meeting the world leaders will hold critical talks to strengthen previous commitments to safeguard the future of the snow leopard and its habitat - the headwaters for rivers on which hundreds of millions directly depend as a source of freshwater.

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Almazbek Atambaev, the President of Kyrgyz Republic at the opening ceremony of the summit.

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Dmitry Gorshkov

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