A team of conservationists is working in China to stop the decline of stealth cat that roams the Tien Shan Mountains.
By (Patch Staff)
The Detroit Zoo’s conservation director is in China working with other conservationists to determine the threats to snow leopards in the Tien Shan Mountains.
Paul Buzzard is part of a team using trail cameras to track the movement of the elusive, secretive snow leopards, and conducting interviews to learn more about human-leopard conflicts and the populations of their potential prey, according to the the Detroit Zoo’s blog.
Conflict arises when snow leopards kill sheep and other livestock, and herders in turn sometimes kill the leopards. “For example, it was reported in one place that five snow leopards are killed per year for eating approximately 100 sheep per year (out of nearly 200,000 total sheep),” Buzzard wrote. “Such claims need to be confirmed, but if anywhere near this much conflict is occurring, it needs to be reduced.”
Buzzard said wildlife conservationists in China are eager to set up protected areas in the Tien Shan Mountains, an important part of the big cats’ range, but more pictures are need to to robustly document the need for a provincial or national preserve.
That’s where Buzzard comes in. Before becoming the zoo’s conservation director last year, he worked for six years as a field biologist for the China Exploration and Research Society in Hong Kong.
As such, he managed research on wild yaks, Tibetan antelopes, red pandas, and snow leopards, among other species.
Buzzard on a return trip to China after having visited in December to set up the trail cameras to get a glimpse of the snow leopards, the least understood of all the big cats not only because of their stealth, but also because of the unforgiving terrain they inhabit. “Because of heavy snowfall, we weren’t able to check all of the cameras, but we reset the ones we did and set up additional cameras in other promising areas,” Buzzard said. “We also made plans to move two of the cameras that were unsuccessful in capturing leopard pictures several miles further into the mountains, which we will do on horseback.”
The cameras he was able to check showed not only snow leopards, including one showing a pair, as well as ibex, wolves and foxes.
The Tien Shan Mountains run from east to west, taking Buzzard to to remote county seat town near the Kazakhstan border where he says he gained the notoriety of being only the second foreigner and the first American to visit in 25 years.
Snow leopards – scientifically, Panthera uncia – are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The World Conservation Union, which assembles the list, said populations declined at least 20 percent over 32 years (two generations) due to losses in habitat and prey.
The report cited heavy poaching in former Russian republics and China, as well as widespread overstocking of livestock in the fragile high-altitude grasslands where leopards roam.
The number of snow leopards remaining in the wild was estimated at between 4,080-6,590, with 2,000-2,500 of them in China.
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