Bound to high,cold,sweep terrain,snow leopards have always remained at fairly low densities

But became still more sparse during the past century because thousands were turned into pelts for the fashion trade.Though officially protected since 1975 under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species,the spotted cats continue to be killed for their coat,worth a black market fortune.Demand for their bones and penis,hyped as tonics in eastern Asia,is increasing.Conflicts with livestock keep growing too,which leads to more persecution by herders.Bait,snares,pitfall traps,and poisons make it far easier to kill a snow leopard than to see one alive.The current population is estimated at only 4000 t0 7000.While these aren't hard figures,the number may be less than half of what it was a century ago.Some authorities fear that the actual number may already have slipped below 3500.Five of the countries in snow leopard range may have 200 or fewer.


There's no escaping the fact that most of the world's big cats are in deep trouble,from the heavily poached tiger to the last 30 free-roaming Amur leopards.Snow leopards are no exception.But here's some encouraging news,the rise of grassroots conservation efforts in a few locales to halt the snow leopard's downward spiral.Several community-base programs in India and Mongolia sounded especially promising-at least on paper.But how well do they really work?Saving an animal means getting to know it,and scientific information about the leopard is scare.Perhaps no other large,popular land mammal has so many details of its natural history still missing.Raghu,the regional director of science and conservation for the nonprofit Snow Leopard Trust,knows as much as anyone,and he has that sixth sense that researchers with years afield develop,an extra awareness that guides hime to the fragile leg bones of an infant blue sheep here in a ravine,or an ibex skull lying there,high on a slope where wind whips the wildflowers into blurs of color,and lets him say things like.At a fresh carcass,you call tell if a snow leopard with young made the kill.The ears will be gnawed off.Those are all the cubs can get at until she opens up the hide for them.Tall and fit,with a long-legged stride,Raghu is a wizard at trailing faint paw prints across stony ground.Buth the otherwise ghostlike predators also leave behind a surprising amount of more obvious clues.It helps to picture 80 to 120 pound cats in a colossal litter box.Dropping,together with scrapes made by the rear legs,reveal habitual routes that tend to follow ridgelines or the base of cliffs.Scrambling for footing day after day,I gradually realize that there travelers like to mark the same type of features that drawmy attention en route,solitary boulders,sharp corners along gullies,knolls,and saddles.Near tree line,they stripe the occasional trunk with long,vertical claw marks.




If my eyes are too busy taking in scenery to notice a fresh scrape,my nose will still register the acrid tang of leopard pee.Elsewhere,I'll catch a musky aroma sprayed from anal glands up onto an overhanging rock.Frequently used scent posts take on an oily sheen.Passing cats stretch to rub their cheeks against them,leaving white hairs for me to tuck in a pocket for luck scaling the next rock face.Fifteen,sixteen thousand feet,no matter how far up I climb,some villager will have gone higher and left stone cairns bearing prayer flags or stacks of horns.Later,the cats come by and leave their own markings on these offerings.A lot of research on snow leopard movements really tells you more about the limits of human abilities,says Raghu after crossing a cascade swollen with glacial melt.