Snow Leopards, in a genus of their own, are endangered big cats. They inhabit rugged, mountainous terrain, in 12 range States - Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. There are regional differences in prey, but the cats’ natural prey includes ungulates and rodents. The global population of Snow Leopards is estimated to be between about 4000 and 7000, but sharp declines in populations have been reported over the past decade from parts of the species’s range. High levels of hunting for the animals’ skins and for live animals, for zoos, during the last century contributed to the species’s endangered status and, from the 1970s, legal measures were taken for its protection. In 1975, the species was listed in Appendix I of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora) and in 1985 it became an Appendix-I species of the Convention of Migratory Species. It has been accorded nation-wide legal protection in almost every range State, in some cases since the 1970s. In spite of such provision, Snow Leopards have been hunted during the 1990s in numbers as high as at any time in the past and this killing continues in the present century.
