By Alicia van den Abeele | Project Leader
Thank you for donating to our Protecting Snow Leopard project. Your support is helping David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation (DSFWF) fund ground-based conservation partner, the Snow Leopard Trust (SLT), who work to protect the elusive snow leopard both in Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia.
The year 2020 has been fraught with challenges, in light of the global pandemic, which has forced us all to adapt, one way or another. Despite the difficulties we are now faced with, we are proud to say that our relationship is as strong as ever with our ground-based conservation partners and that our combined efforts are continuing to make a difference to some of the most world’s most vulnerable wildlife populations and communities living alongside them.
Today, global snow leopard populations remain alarmingly low and individuals are still threatened by retaliatory killing as a response to livestock predation, illegal hunting of the specie and their wild prey, lack of conservation education in local communities, and habitat destruction. Each one of these threats is driven by human activities.
Your generosity, your impact:
DSWF chooses to directly support SLT in strengthening collaborations with rural communities, through its livelihood stabilisation programs (handicrafts, livestock insurance, corral improvements) and conservation awareness programs for adults and children. In fact, we are incredibly proud to count 216 women from 26 herder communities engaged in conservation through these schemes. It is these programs that help increase understanding and tolerance for snow leopards, reduce retribution killing, and ensure the survival of this beautiful specie in the wild.
Through long term conservation funding, DSWF is enabling teams on the ground to carry out a study in order to better understand the ecology of these cats and the relationship between overlapping snow leopard ranges and those of local communities. Amazingly, the camera traps used in this research revealed photos of the two oldest known snow leopard matriarchs roaming with their healthy cubs in Tots Nature Reserve. Orjan Johansson, Snow Leopard Trust senior scientist remarks that the fact that these individuals are still having cubs shows how little we know about snow leopard ecology and therefore, the importance of these long-term studies in securing their future. This intricate work has been crucial in understanding how communities can be protected, educated and therefore inspired to live in harmony with snow leopards.
From everyone here at David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, thank you for your kind on-going support to snow leopards. Your donations are helping protect this beautiful elusive species and giving them a chance to survive and thrive in the wild.
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