The Forest department has undertaken necessary preparations for conducting the first ever exercise to estimate the population of snow leopards in Uttarakhand. The counting exercise is slated to begin on June 16 and will also include the counting of the Himalayan Tahr along with the black bear and Himalayan brown bear.
It is worth mentioning here that a joint team of Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the Forest Department had for the first time camera trapped a snow leopard in the Malari region of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve in April, 2011. There has been a rise in photographic and other evidence of snow leopard presence in the State since then but there is no proper estimate of the snow leopard population in Uttarakhand.
The counting exercise slated to start from June 16 will be conducted in the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, Askot wildlife sanctuary, Gangotri national park and other high altitude regions of Chamoli, Uttarkashi, Bageshwar and Pithoragarh districts. According to Forest Department officials, the snow leopard count will be conducted by trained teams, each accompanied by an expert from the WII. Apart from camera traps set in areas known to be frequented by snow leopards, fecal droppings, scratchings and pug marks will also be checked to estimate the population of snow leopards in the State.
listed under the Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and classified as ‘endangered’ by the IUCN Red list, the snow leopard inhabits high altitude mountainous areas difficult for humans to access. This is one of the reasons why the authorities have not yet been able to get a reliable estimate of the population of this elusive big cat in Uttarakhand.