Government wakes up only after naturalists raise the issue
Kashmiri snow leopard listed as endangered
Srinagar: With the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) “Red List” of Threatened Animals categorizing snow leopard as “endangered species”, State government in collaboration with Union Ministry of Environment is launching a program to conserve the wild animal in its habitat.
The program ‘Project Snow Leopard’ will be launched in the last week of February from Hemis National Park in Ladakh and will later extend to Kargil and other hilly regions of the State.
“We are starting the Project Snow Leopard by end of this month. Environment Ministry, Government of India, has agreed in principle to launch the project in five Himalayan states. But the main focus of the project will be on our State and 60 per cent of total funds would be spent in J&K as we have 60 per cent of total population of Snow Leopard in India,” Chief Wildlife Warden A K Srivastava told Rising Kashmir.
The project, as per Srivastava, is a manifestation of the Government of India’s resolve to conserve biodiversity with community participation. He said the Wildlife Institute of India and the Mysore based Nature Conservation Foundation would be the supporting agencies for the project.
Besides J&K, the project would be undertaken in four states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.
Scientifically known as Uncia uncia, the snow leopard is native to remote mountain ranges of Central and Southern Asia where their population is estimated to be around 7,000. In India the maximum population of snow leopards (about 60 per cent) inhabit Kashmir Himalayan mountain range at an altitude of about 3,000 metres above the sea level.
“The Union Environment Ministry will soon release Rs 1 crore to us for this project. In the beginning, the money will be spent on securing landscape for conservation, capacity building, research on wildlife and human activities in snow leopard habitat, grazing and management policies and education awareness in and around the Hemis National Park,” Srivastava said.
Regional Wildlife Warden Asgar Inayatullah said snow leopards are at the top of the ecological pyramid and suffer the most due to relatively smaller population size and also due to man-animal conflict.
“This situation has further aggravated in Kashmir due to hostile landscape and intervention of humans in its habitat. Its population has dwindled during the past two decades but the Indian Wildlife Board maintains that estimated snow leopard population in our State is around 200,” he said.
Inayatullah said the new project envisages active involvement of local communities in the conservation of snow leopards. “Our attempt is to address the identified threats besides strengthening the protected areas in Kashmir,” he said. “This is a major challenge for us but the snow leopard is the heritage of the Himalayas.”
The degradation of their natural habitat, poaching for their furs, reduction of their prey due to hunting and killings by local people in revenge for attacks on their livestock are some of the main threats, the Regional Wildlife Warden said.
In J&K, snow leopards are distributed throughout the Trans-Himalayan district of Ladakh and more sporadically on the Southern side of the main Himalayan range like Kishtwar, Tarsar, Liddarwat and Marsar (Upper Dachigam).
(Rising Kashmir)