Snow Leopard Day: Protecting the 'ghost of the mountains'

October 23 marked the UN-designated International Day of the Snow Leopard, with this year's focus remaining on Asia's high-mountain flagship species and the efforts to keep it alive.

China holds roughly 60% of the world's snow leopard habitat, and recent surveys are sharpening the picture of how many of the elusive cats roam its mountains. In the country's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, a year-long survey launched in April 2025 deployed 312 infrared cameras across rugged terrain and identified 109 individual snow leopards, including 17 family groups. Researchers estimated a population of about 205 in and around the Tomur Peak National Nature Reserve.

A separate study published in January 2025, covering approximately 360,000 square kilometers of the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, estimated 1,002 snow leopards in the Sanjiangyuan region, with an average density of about 0.9 individuals per 100 square kilometers. Each animal's rosettes act like a fingerprint, allowing researchers to identify individuals and calculate populations.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly part of the toolkit. A system developed in China now recognizes snow leopards from camera-trap images with accuracy above 90% and can identify dozens of other high-altitude species.

But monitoring also exposes conflict. Snow leopards prey on livestock, and herders bear the losses. Prey depletion and retaliatory killing remain persistent threats. To address this, many regions in China operate compensation schemes, while community funds and ranger jobs give pastoralists a direct role in verification and patrols.

In Zaduo County, northwest China's Qinghai Province, the "Valley of the Cats" ecotourism initiative had generated more than 2.51 million yuan (about $350,000) in revenue by 2024, all retained within the local community, according to data shown on the project's official website.

Cross-border cooperation is also seen as essential since snow leopards range across 12 countries. A China-Nepal workshop held in Kathmandu in late November 2024, supported by the Chinese Embassy in Nepal, shared methods in AI recognition, genetics and community ecotourism.

Climate change remains the longer-term threat. Snow leopard habitat on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau could shrink by 13% to 23.4% under intermediate and high emissions scenarios, with prey habitat declining even more sharply, according to projections in a government-funded research published on Ecology and Evolution in 2025. For mountain communities, the challenge is sharing both the costs and the benefits of keeping the ghost of the mountains alive.