India launches first protocol to count snow leopard population
NEWDELHI: Union forest minister Prakash Javadekar launched on Wednesday the country’s first national protocol for enumerating the population of snow leopards, an elusive predator found in the higher reaches of the Himalayas and other mountain ranges of Asia, on Wednesday.
“Enumeration of tigers was a difficult task 20 years ago but we made it possible. India now has 77% of the world’s tiger population. I am sure, with the cooperation of the range countries, the population of snow leopards will also be doubled in the coming decade,” Javadekar said at the fourth steering committee meeting of the Global Snow Leopard & Ecosystem Protection (GSLEP)
Program on International Snow Leopard Day, celebrated on Wednesday.
Although no count of the endangered big cats have been conducted, estimates provided by various organisations working on snow leopard conservation suggest that there could be around 400- 700 of the predators spread across Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
An official at the union ministry of environment and forest said on condition of anonymity that around 500 of these cats could be in the Ladakh region alone. “India is extremely keen on snow leopard conservation,... but better ecosystem (management) and more intervention in creating a better habitat for the snow leopard is what we should strive for. It is extremely important to conserve the pristine habitat of the snow leopard because these mountain ranges are also the source of water for us,” said CK Mishra, union environment and forest secretary.
According to the Javadekar, India is now home to around 512 lions, 30,000 elephants and 2,500 one-horned rhinoceros. The number of tigers in the country has also shot up to 2,967 from 2226 in 2014 ,according to the latest census figures.
An expert welcomed the protocol to count the snow leopards. “This is an excellent initiative. Till date we hardly have any concrete data on their population,” said Raman Sukumar, a member of the National Board for Wildlife .