Loading…
India took part in the Russian-Indian Roundtable Meeting on Snow Leopard Study and Conservation on 26 August 2026 at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
The meeting was held under the Partnership Agreement signed in December 2025 between the Interregional Association 'Irbis' and the International Big Cat Alliance, whose secretariat is headquartered in India.
The delegation of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, with officials of the Wildlife Institute of India, presented India's advances in snow leopard population estimation, radio telemetry and genetic analysis.
Russian participants included the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation, the Severtsov Institute, Moscow Zoo and Rosprirodnadzor, alongside leading snow leopard researchers.
Snow leopards live at high altitude in low densities over vast, difficult terrain, so they cannot be counted by direct sighting. Population estimation instead combines occupancy surveys — walking trails and recording signs such as pugmarks, scrapes and scat to work out where the animal is present — with camera traps at selected locations, since every snow leopard's rosette pattern is unique and individuals can therefore be identified from photographs. Radio telemetry attaches a transmitting collar to an animal so its movements, home range and dispersal can be tracked over time, which is how corridors between populations are identified. Genetic analysis works from non-invasive samples, chiefly scat, to confirm species and individual identity and to assess how genetically connected separate populations are. Together the three answer different questions: how many, where they go, and whether the populations are still interbreeding.
Simple Analogy: Camera traps are a headcount, radio collars are a movement diary, and genetic sampling is a family tree — you need all three to know whether a population is merely surviving or actually connected.
Cooperation on the conservation of the world's seven big cats — tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, cheetah, jaguar and puma
Key: Launched by India in April 2023 during the 50th anniversary of Project Tiger. Its Framework Agreement came into force on 23 January 2025, making the IBCA a treaty-based inter-governmental organisation with its own legal personality. Its Secretariat is headquartered in New Delhi and its governance runs through an Assembly of Members and a Standing Committee. It is the IBCA's December 2025 partnership with the Russian association 'Irbis' that framed this roundtable.
Landscape-level conservation of the snow leopard and its prey across India's high-altitude ranges
Key: Launched in 2009 by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. It covers the Himalayan and trans-Himalayan states and union territories — Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh — and treats whole landscapes rather than protected areas alone, because snow leopard ranges extend far beyond park boundaries.
Coordinated conservation across all snow leopard range countries
Key: Endorsed with the Bishkek Declaration adopted on 23 October 2013 in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, by the 12 range countries — Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Its founding target, 'Secure 20 by 2020', was to secure at least 20 snow leopard landscapes.
Produce a scientifically defensible national population figure
Key: Coordinated by the Wildlife Institute of India with the Nature Conservation Foundation and WWF-India; covered more than 70% of India's potential snow leopard habitat in the trans-Himalaya and produced the figure of 718.
The snow leopard is listed in Schedule I, the highest level of protection under Indian law, which carries the severest penalties and allows no reduction below the statutory minimum
Listed since 1975; all international trade primarily for commercial purposes is prohibited
Listed since 1985, obliging range states to conserve the species and its habitat
The political instrument under which the 12 range countries endorsed the GSLEP programme; not a binding treaty but the reference point for range-country cooperation
India's snow leopard range is the trans-Himalaya and the higher Himalaya — cold, arid, high-altitude terrain above the treeline. Ladakh holds the largest share of the national population, followed by Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, with smaller populations in the eastern Himalaya. Hemis National Park in Ladakh, established in 1981, is India's largest national park and among the best-known snow leopard habitats in the world. The snow leopard is the state animal of both Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh, and Ladakh's state bird is the black-necked crane.
Wildlife research, training and advisory institution; coordinated SPAI and presented India's estimation, telemetry and genetics work at Moscow
Treaty-based inter-governmental organisation for big cat conservation; the framework under which this roundtable was held
Nodal ministry for wildlife policy, Project Snow Leopard and India's participation in the IBCA
The Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources — the environmental oversight agency that took part in the roundtable
The IBCA was launched at Project Tiger's 50th anniversary in April 2023, extending the single-species model to seven big cats
Environmental and scientific cooperation is a lower-profile strand of a relationship usually examined through defence and energy
The snow leopard's role in the high mountain ecosystem parallels the tiger's in forest ecosystems — the argument for protecting a predator to protect a landscape
The individual-identification method used for snow leopards is the same as that used in India's tiger estimation, also coordinated by the Wildlife Institute of India
The snow leopard's Indian range coincides with the cold desert biogeographic zone, a standard physical-geography topic
GS Paper 3 > Environment > Conservation, Biodiversity and Protected Areas
General Awareness > Environment and Wildlife
General Awareness > Environment
"Project Tiger" was launched in India in which year?
Answer: 1973
High — big cat conservation, the IBCA and species conservation status are staple UPSC Prelims environment topics, and SPAI figures have been in circulation since 2024
Tracking a collared animal by radio signal to map its movement, home range and dispersal over time
Identifying species and individuals from samples such as scat, without capturing or handling the animal
A species whose condition reflects the health of its wider ecosystem; the snow leopard serves this role for high mountain systems
The cold, arid high-altitude region north of the main Himalayan range, covering Ladakh and parts of Himachal Pradesh — the core of India's snow leopard habitat
The Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources, the country's environmental oversight agency