Emily J. Gertz is an associate editor for environment and wildlife at TakePart.
A new estimate of the global population of snow leopards—a rare big cat thought to prowl about 1.2 million square miles of remote, rugged mountain terrain across 12 Central Asian nations—would appear to be an uncommon bit of good news for wildlife conservation.
Published last month in Snow Leopards, a 644-page compendium on snow leopard science and conservation, the estimate puts the global snow leopard population at 4,700 to 8,700 animals across 44 percent of the species’ range, compared with earlier projections of around 3,900 to 7,500 animals in total.
There was not enough information available to estimate how numerous the ghostly spotted leopards might be throughout their mountainous habitat, said Peter Zahler, the coordinator of the snow leopard program at the Wildlife Conservation Society, who coauthored the Snow Leopards chapter containing the population estimate. “As scientists, we know what we know, and we have not looked at the quality of those other areas—the other 56 percent,” he said.
Other experts say the available data don’t support the revised figure even across a subsection of the animal’s range, and they worry that it could create complacency among government officials and the public about curbing threats to the snow leopard’s survival.
“This will have a tremendous (negative) impact on snow leopard conservation throughout its range,” Som Ale, a biologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s cat specialist group, wrote in an email. “I envisage that [the] snow leopard would be listed as low priority and [a] low-funding species while the opposite is what is necessary.”
Ale, whose research and conservation work have focused on snow leopards in the Himalayas, is among the nearly 200 authors who contributed to Snow Leopards.
This disagreement among big-cat experts follows an unusually public controversy over the global tiger count. An upbeat report released during an April meeting of government officials from tiger range nations claimed a 20 percent increase in the species’ global population since 2010. But the announcement was criticized by tiger conservation organizations as a science-light publicity exercise.
Both disputes highlight the challenges of studying elusive big cats in their native habitats and how conscious all sides are of managing the public’s enthusiasm for saving them.
“To me the exciting part is—and it’s not a terribly complex story—is that there are more of these animals than we thought, and that is rare in these times,” said Zahler. “Tigers have lost over 90 percent of their population over 100 years, and lions have lost 40 percent in the last 20 years. The signs are pointing down fast. So it’s a piece of good news in the big-cat world where there hasn’t been much.”
The count was based on field data and observations shared in 2008 at a conference in Beijing attended by government officials, scientists, and conservationists. Improved technologies for assessing snow leopard populations, including more durable camera traps and satellite tracking collars, “have given us a better idea of what snow leopards’ home range is,” Zahler said. “The fact is, suddenly you could really track snow leopards—where they’re going and how far. At first there was no way to do it.”
Zahler and Tom McCarthy, the executive director of the snow leopard program for the conservation group Panthera and coeditor of Snow Leopards, both anticipated criticism of the revised population count.
“I know some people that will argue that ‘Well, we still do our camera trapping in only the best possible places, because we want to get good pictures of snow leopards,’ ” McCarthy said. “That might have been the case 10 years ago. But what we’re seeing now, particularly with Panthera—we’ve got five or six hundred cameras out in snow leopard range, and we don’t just target high-level population areas. We target a number of places where we’re not even sure snow leopards occur. So that argument doesn’t hold a lot of water.”
Gustaf Samelius, assistant scientific director of Snow Leopard Trust, lauded Snow Leopards as “a fantastic source of information put together” but said that the authors of the book’s population estimate chapter “have been a little uncritical at how they arrived at the numbers.”
While some of the data were gathered via tracking, camera trapping, or genetic sampling of snow leopard fecal samples, the studies are being conducted across too small an extent of the cat’s range to justify the higher population estimate, he said. The rest is still guesswork, even if it comes from people working on the ground in snow leopard range states.
“I teach a wildlife biology conservation class,” Samelius said. “We talk about estimating abundance a lot. I tell them, ‘We can land on the moon, but we have a very hard time estimating abundance of animals.’ ”
McCarthy agreed that with an animal as difficult to observe as the snow leopard, informed guesses continue to play a big part in estimating the size of the population. “I would not say that what we have still goes much beyond a guesstimate,” he said. “But the key takeaway here is [that] for once much more of the population figure was based on camera trapping, or genetic assessments, using fecal counts, sign surveys, rather than just more wild guessing.”
All the researchers agreed on at least one thing: With snow leopards facing multiple threats—including poaching of both the cats and their prey, retribution killings by herders for livestock losses, increased mining and road building in their habitats, and climate change—it would be a mistake to cut back on conservation efforts.
“It’s important to make sure it’s not lost that regardless of the total count of snow leopards, we know that there are some real threats out there, and they need to be dealt with,” said Zahler. “They are not going to go away without concerted effort.”
ALTERNATIVELY:
If you would like to send a donation direct, please sent to our ADMIN TEAM : sssnsfood@gmail.com PLEASE send payment as family/friend so we are not charged a fee and we will acknowledge your donation – thank you xxx
URGENT – Its is now MID NOV and we have received 215 Euros in donations, we are VERY WORRIED at this time without YOUR SUPPORT we will be unable to continue to feed and provide vet care for the dogs at the shelter and the street cats, PLEASE consider a donation no matter how small, thank you.
Food and ongoing Vet Care = 310 Euros per month
Land Rental (Fenced Area) = 40 Euros per month (its is vital that we keep this payment up to date )
We are Respect for Animals and we campaign every day against the cruel and unnecessary fur industry – an international trade that kills 100 million animals every year.
Our original award-winning ‘Dumb Animals’ poster and cinema advertising led to the exposure of the cruelty of the fur trade and prompted society’s rejection of fur wearing in the UK.
We now plan to launch a new global ‘fur for animals’ campaign using effective social media messaging to raise awareness that fur is cruel and buying fur perpetuates animal suffering.
We will work with the world’s TOP design and creative colleges and sponsor a global competition to produce a new ‘Dumb Animals’ campaign fit for the 21st Century. The world has changed since the first wave of anti-fur campaigns and so has the way and where fur is sold.
We need to evolve and step up our campaign. With your help, we can.
We have just launched a Crowdfunding campaign to fund our new exciting campaign, ‘Fur for Animals’.
We’re going to be taking on the fur trade with a 21st Century campaign to rival our original award winning ‘Dumb Animals’ adverts in the 1990s, which led to a change in attitudes to fur in the UK.
But now, several years later,, due to new demand for fur in Russia and China, more animals are being killed for their fur than ever before.
We know you are one of our most committed supporters and we need your help.
We urgently need the funding to fulfill our aim of working with some of the world’s top young designers that will take social media by storm and raise awareness about the cruelty of fur around the world.
Posted on November 24, 2016 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
A Christmas Story
Every year, when Christmas comes, I wonder what gifts I should give. Most people think – give to people?
No!, not me; I mean to give to the animals!
On previous Christmas’ I had planned a one-woman anti-fur action, as a kind of personal gift / action for the suffering fur animals. I had inspected all the big shops in the city near to where I live. All of them sold fur articles. In one shop, which was very noble and expensive, there was a fox jacket priced at 1.199.- Euros. “It is red fox”, the seller informed me, allegedly “something that was very special”! – yes special to the fox; it is its coat to keep it warm ! When I put on the jacket, as part of my plan; I already knew what I would give the animals this Christmas.
I bought lots of small, white, self-adhesive stickers.
I typed on the computer:
“Pelz ist Mord
Kein Pelz kaufen” which means – Fur is murder, don`t buy fur.
I printed out 60 labels; each which carried this wording.
I decided to stick each of my labels over the price label of the fur items being sold. There are 2 reasons why I decided to do this:
Spontaneously, if we want to buy something, we always first look at the price, and
The price label is not part of the article, it is cut off at the checkout. This meant that even if I had been caught, no action could be taken against me for causing damage to the property.
Theoretically! – But it would be best not to be caught in the first place !!
That’s why I had tested all the cameras in the store. There were cameras everywhere. At the department where there was the red fox jacket, there was even a discreet camera mounted on the wall.
My plan had to be as follows:
take the fur jacket in hand, look for the position of the price label, try as if I was thinking of buying, and then… zack, zack!! quickly stick my anti fur label over the price tag !
Then, job done, move on to the price tag of the next fur item !
I had already stuck about 40 labels to different garments, but still none on the red fox fur. And I really wanted that!
“What does this jacket cost?” I asked the saleswoman. “1.199” she said; “but it is worth the money, something you will not find anywhere” !
I tried the jacket on and the saleswoman stood next to me. I made a small turn around in front of the mirror to view it from different angles, I had to be convincing that I was interested ! “I have to think it over,” I said, “it is too expensive for me”.
The saleswoman went away, disappointed by what I had said.
I put the jacket back on, quickly put my sticker onto this prize fur and left the store as quickly as I could. It was the sticker number 41!
When I think at this action today, I must admit, it was not a big or a direct gift for the animals, I know that. I have only provoked a little bit of attention into a very bloody business called the fur trade, nothing more.
Maybe I could have done more, if I had other helpers and activists with me. Yes! maybe … but with “if and but” you cannot change society and the suffering of the animals. We cannot wait for great deeds, everyone does what he or she can personally, now and again. Small gifts and actions for the animals are better than nothing.
And it should not be only at Christmas time.
Best regards for you, dear Mark, and for all campaigners fighting for animals everywhere !
Tessa is a young kitty girl who already knows the meaning of pain and suffering.
A couple of months ago, while she was living on the streets of a village near Novi Sad, she had an open carpal fracture of her right leg. We’ll probably never find out what happened to her, but the point is that her horrific injury was left untreated for around two months. When someone finally took photos of her, she was in very bad shape and her right front leg seemed to be completely useless, so the vet in Novi Sad (who was the first to examine her) recommended amputation.
However, when she arrived at the shelter she had a thorough physical exam, blood tests and an X-ray by our vet who opted for surgery in order to try and save her injured leg. He removed the necrotic tissue; the wound was debrided and Tessa has been receiving IV fluids over the first couple of days since her arrival, as she was seriously dehydrated and malnourished.
She is being given Longacef and vitamins daily and is eating high quality food, constantly asking for more, while she is getting ready for the surgery which will be performed as soon as her condition becomes stable. Her right carpus is almost completely destroyed by infection and gangrene which is still spreading, so her leg will need to be operated on urgently. The vet is planning to somehow surgically align the fracture with crossed pins, while fixing the bones vertically with metal screws and if everything goes well, a callus is supposed to form a “false joint” which will remain stiff, but it will allow Tessa’s elbow to bend normally.
Once everything heals, she is expected to be able to use her right front leg even though she will certainly be limping for quite a long time or might walk with a slight limp forever, but she’ll be able to bear at least some of her weight on her injured leg. None of us here is decisively against amputation if it turns out to be in her best interest, but not before all of the other options are already tried, exhausted and have failed. An amputation is undoubtedly the easiest and the simplest way out; nonetheless, Tessa is only around eight months old and after everything she’s been through, she definitely deserves a fighting chance.
Whether she manages to overcome her problems or not, she has already proven to be a true survivor, at such a tender age and with an awful start in life. The approximate costs of her surgery alone are around 250 euros if nothing goes wrong; when we add the costs of the drugs she is receiving, special food, diapers and fuel needed for every day’s trips to the vet, it all adds up to about 330 euros.
Donations have been pretty much non-existent lately and we are flat broke at the moment. If you’d like to help our courageous little fighter who has already had more than her share of suffering and neglect, please help us pay off her bills!
Every donation, no matter the size, can go a long way!
Our PayPal is savage1@shaw.ca.
Thank you all in advance!
Tessa had her stitches removed on Saturday. She’s gained a little weight and is now free to discover and explore her new surroundings 🙂
A huge thank you to all of you who have helped this lovely kitty girl!
To donate, please go to the following and search for donate on the left hand side.
