Challenges of snow leopard conservation in China
The snow leopard (Panthera uncial, Figure 1A) is a kind of beautiful big cat that is believed to originate on the Tibetan Plateau seven million years ago (Tseng et al. 2013) and now inhabits alpine and subalpine zones in the remote and rugged mountains on the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding mountain ranges. Its range countries include Afghani (Figure 1B) (Snow Leopard Network, 2014) Snow leopards mainly prey on mountain ungulates like blue sheep and ibex, but sometimes also prey on marmots and livestock. As an apex predator and keystone species, snow leopards play an important role in maintaining the stability of the unique mountain ecosystem they inhabit. It is estimated that only about 4,0007,000 individual snow leopards are living in the wild now (Snow Leopard Network, 2014) With the threats of habitat loss, depletion of wild prey and poaching, the snow leopard has been listed as Endangered by International Union for Conservation of Snow leopards in China, which account for about 60% of the global snow leopard population, are mainly distributed in Qinghai Province, Tibet, and Xinjiang Autonomous Regions and also discovered in Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces, and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (Figure 1B) Snow leopards experienced a hard time from the 1950s to the 1980s in China. They were hunted as a livestock predator and were an economically valuable species, so that they had been nearly eliminated in most of the range provinces like Sichuan, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia by the late 1980s (Li and Lu, 2014) The fate of snow leopards in China was changed in the late 1980s, when they were listed as a Class I national protected animal in1989. Several nature reserves were established step by step in the snow leopard range area, such as the Tomur National Na In the past two decades, China has made big improvements in the conservation of snow leopards, however, there are still several challenges. Poaching is still a great threat to snow leopards (Snow Leopard Network, 2014) Snow leopard skins were traditionally used by local people to make hats, coats or decorative wall mountings; snow leopard bones, together with other leopard bones, were mainly used as a substitute for tiger bones. Besides these traditional uses of snow leopard parts, which are strictly prohibited now, the snow leopard market may be shifting towards luxury products in recent years (Li and Lu, 2014) Due to the high price of snow
Science China Life Sciences