Environment ministry launches campaign to save India's 700 remaining snow leopards
A special conservation program is being drafted in a bid to take urgent steps to protect snow leopard and dugongs as they are battling for survival in their habitats.
Snow leopards, found in high altitude Himalayan region, were declared endangered as per the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Though the decline of the species over last few years has not been officially documented owing to physical restraints arising out of high altitude landscapes, dedicated wildlife groups have estimated their current count in India to be around 700.
Endangered: The growing intolerance of people towards the snow leopard is one of the main reasons for its declining numbers
The upper Spiti landscape in Lahaul and Spiti in Himachal Pradesh is said to have a density of only one snow leopard in every 100 sq km of area.
According to wildlife conservationists, the government had announced a dedicated conservation program for the snow leopard in 2009, but the project was never implemented.
The failure of its implementation along with increasing stress on the Himalayan eco-system in the last five years has aggravated the survival of the species.
According to Koustubh Sharma, Indian Regional Ecologist for the Snow Leopard Trust, snow leopard is an indicator species of the
mountain
ecosystems reflecting its health, just as the tiger is an indicator of the terrestrial landscape.
It reflects the state of rivers (originating in mountains) and the quantity of rainfall determined by the mountains.
While illegal poaching for its skin and bones to be traded to China and South East Asia is a cause of its decline, the biggest reason, according to Koustubh, is the poorly planned developed projects like mining, hydro power dams and large-scale cutting in the Indian Himalayan region that fragments their corridors and destroys their habitats.
In some villages in the upper Indian Himalayas, the growing intolerance of inhabitants towards the snow leopard that competes with the livestock for food, resulting in the former preying upon the latter, has also been a cause for its decline.
"The recovery efforts cannot yield fruit until the projects are sensitively appraised for their effects on the mountain ecology. An integrated landscape-based conservation plan needs to be adopted to be effective," said Koustubh.
A senior wildlife official of the environment ministry said: "The project will be in shape soon. The conservation will be a landscape-based, trans-Himalayan approach with cooperation with other habitat countries like China, Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan, Russia and other Central Asian countries."