Through Agvaantseren,the organization buys there items from herding families and arranges to market them abroad

Participants must first sign a pledge to preserve snow leopards and their prey and to encourge neighbors to do the same.The arrangement boosts incomes by 10 to 15 percent,which elevates the status of the women and translates into more emphasis on education and health care.If no one in the community kills protected species over the course of a year,the program members receive a 20 percent bonus.In one of Agvaantseren's communities,a winer villege of herders in far northwestern Monogloa.a lively scene of trade took place on the floor of a ger heated by a stove fueled with yak dung.A Khazakh woman named Saulekhan Kekei had brought 17 felt rugs made over 68 days.She had six children and an ill husband to support.Those rugs would bring the equivalent of nearly three months wages in her job as a janitor and guard at the village school .I own only 12 sheep,Saulekhan said.I have to buy wool from neighbors.But I am able to provide for everyone at home now and pay for my eldest daughter to go to college.


An independent review in 2006 found no poaching of snow leopards in areas where SLE operates.Agvaantseren just added eight more communities and intends to expand a microcredit scheme that lets members borrow at a discount to buy items such as spinning wheels or material to improve corrals.People hear good report from neighbors,and they come to us now asking how to join,she said.In our imagination,snow leopards belong to realm beyond the dust and noise of human affairs.In reality,only about a fifth of their range lies within reserves,and many of these contain villages and livestock.Informal protected zones exist around many Buddhist monasteries,but the Western model of establishing nature sanctuaries in landscapes unoccupide by humans simply doesn't fit much of Asia.




Projects like the Homestays program in India and the handicrafts business in Mongolia,however,seem to fit very well.Though they cover only a small fraction of the species homeland so far,they make live leopards more valuable to more people each year,and in doing so they mark a path toward the conservation of high mountain ecosystems. I never minded not seeing snow leopards-not as long as I found plenty of their sign.It was my guarantee that I would soon come across other spectacular wildlife.And it meant that I could still dream of pulling myself up to the spine of a ridge,as Raghu once did,and meeting face to face with a snow cloud colored cat climbing from the other side.