Snow leopard threats grow in Gilgit-Baltistan, experts say

Snow leopards in Gilgit-Baltistan face growing threats, conservation experts have said, according to a Dawn report that flagged mounting risks to the species in the region.

The newspaper's report, published under the headline "Snow leopards face growing threats in Gilgit-Baltistan: experts", did not set out in the copy available the specific threats the experts were describing, and gave no estimate of how many snow leopards remain in Gilgit-Baltistan.

A separate camera-trap study in the Karakoram, reported by the outlet Bioengineer, found that Himalayan ibex, a principal prey species for the snow leopard, favour rugged valley terrain where they are safer, while snow leopards adjust where they range in order to follow that prey. As the outlet described it, the study examined how ibex weigh access to grazing against the risk of being hunted.

Chitral Today reported that stronger laws had been suggested to protect the snow leopard. The outlet did not give the detail of the proposed legal changes or identify who had suggested them.

Bloom Pakistan reported that Pakistan's snow leopards face an extinction threat. It did not give population figures or identify the source of that assessment.

The reports did not say where in Gilgit-Baltistan the experts' concerns were concentrated, whether the findings had been submitted to the provincial wildlife department, or what measures conservation groups are now seeking. No official statement on the snow leopard's status in Gilgit-Baltistan was carried in any of the reports seen by this newspaper, and the wildlife department was not quoted.

The snow leopard is associated with the high mountain ranges of northern Pakistan, and the Karakoram study places at least part of the debate over its fortunes in the same terrain where ibex and other prey live. How the ibex use that terrain, and how the leopards move in response, is the question the camera-trap work set out to answer.

This newspaper was unable to reach the experts quoted by Dawn or the authors of the Karakoram study for confirmation of their findings. Further details were not available.