A snow leopard was found preying a local herdsman's yak in northwest China's Qinghai Province. 

A local herdsmen in Qinghai's Guoluo Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture found that some of his yaks had bites and injuries by unknown beasts. He also discovered one of the yaks had been killed and some of the organs had been eaten. 

To recognize what had happened to his yaks and protect the herd, the herdsman put the dead yak outside his courtyard at night, and observed nearby.

At around 11:00 p.m. on Monday, a snow leopard appeared and started eating the dead yak.

The snow leopard appearance means that local environment is improving.

"The herdsmen's awareness of environmental protection is increasing year by year. On the one hand, it is because China encourages  environment protection. On the other, the herdsmen have been living in this place for generations, so they think that this coexistence between human and animal is necessary and normal. Regarding this case of snow leopard eating livestock, we can see that this kind of human-animal conflict appears not only in the Sanjiangyuan area, but in the whole country, or even the whole world. Wherever human beings live, such a human-animal conflict exists," said Lian Xinming, a researcher with Northwest Plateau Institute of Biology of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

(Cover image via VCG)

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