On the rocky cliffs of the Himalayas, the path to snow leopard conservation is paved in feces.
Their population decimated by poaching and habitat destruction, only about 4,000 of the endangered cats remain in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Conflicts with mountain farmers and pastoral herders also contribute to their dwindling numbers.
“The problem is when a snow leopard gets inside a livestock pen,” said Madhu Chetri, a biologist at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. When that happens, he said, the carnivore usually eats a handful of goats and sheep, but in some cases it can massacre more than 100 animals in a single corral.
If the cat gets stuck in a pen, the inevitable tends to occur. “There is a high chance the herders will kill it in retaliation,” he said.
Dr. Chetri and his team are studying conflicts between humans and snow leopards in areas of Nepal in order to find ways to mitigate them. That’s why they spent more than 150 days in the Central Himalayas sniffing out snow leopard scat. Embedded in the excrement were clues to decoding the cat’s diet and determining how often it ate livestock, which could one day guide conservation strategies to reduce contact between snow leopards and farm animals. They published their findings Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.
In addition to collecting snow leopard feces, the team also scooped up wolf droppings. Himalayan wolves are not nearly as threatened as their feline counterparts, but they are also an elusive mountain predator that meddles with livestock.
Dr. Chetri and his colleagues trekked along trails, mountain ridges, riverbeds and mountain passes collecting the predators’ wastes. When they came across a pile, they placed a small piece into a plastic tube and a large chunk into a paper envelope. They performed DNA analysis on the pieces in the plastic tubes to determine whether they belonged to a snow leopard, wolf or some other carnivore, as well as to figure out if it was left by a male or a female. The researchers later examined the pieces in the envelopes for traces of fur to determine what the predator had eaten.
They collected more than 800 dung samples, but not every one was a winner. In a few cases they accidentally collected feces that belonged to a feral dog, a lynx or a brown bear. Among their fecal data set, they verified that 182 of their specimens belonged to snow leopards and 57 to wolves.
The researchers used water and mesh sieves to extract hair from the larger samples and manually took out bones, claws, feathers and plants. The team found that 27 percent of the snow leopard stool samples included domestic animals like horses and goats.
But by far the most popular animal that the spotted cats were dining on was the wild bharal, or Himalayan blue sheep. Traces of this big horned beast appeared in more than half of the samples. The researchers also found that livestock remains appeared in male droppings twice as often as in the specimens from females.
Dr. Chetri said that their findings would serve as the first step toward understanding how snow leopards affect the livestock of the rural peoples in the Himalayas. Their next steps are to determine the economic impact that the killings of farm animals have on the pasture herders, and then to develop strategies that will help reduce interactions between humans and the cats.
As the field work came to an end, Dr. Chetri experienced a frightening encounter.
“On the last day the snow leopard spotted me thinking maybe I was a prey,” he said. As he was hiding in the cliffs, the cat crawled closer until it was about 10 feet away. “I was really scared and I had to turn over and show it, ‘No, I’m not prey, I’m a human.’”
On the rocky cliffs of the Himalayas, the path to snow leopard conservation is paved in feces.
Their population decimated by poaching and habitat destruction, only about 4,000 of the endangered cats remain in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Conflicts with mountain farmers and pastoral herders also contribute to their dwindling numbers.
“The problem is when a snow leopard gets inside a livestock pen,” said Madhu Chetri, a biologist at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. When that happens, he said, the carnivore usually eats a handful of goats and sheep, but in some cases it can massacre more than 100 animals in a single corral.
If the cat gets stuck in a pen, the inevitable tends to occur. “There is a high chance the herders will kill it in retaliation,” he said.
Dr. Chetri and his team are studying conflicts between humans and snow leopards in areas of Nepal in order to find ways to mitigate them. That’s why they spent more than 150 days in the Central Himalayas sniffing out snow leopard scat. Embedded in the excrement were clues to decoding the cat’s diet and determining how often it ate livestock, which could one day guide conservation strategies to reduce contact between snow leopards and farm animals. They published their findings Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.
In addition to collecting snow leopard feces, the team also scooped up wolf droppings. Himalayan wolves are not nearly as threatened as their feline counterparts, but they are also an elusive mountain predator that meddles with livestock.
Dr. Chetri and his colleagues trekked along trails, mountain ridges, riverbeds and mountain passes collecting the predators’ wastes. When they came across a pile, they placed a small piece into a plastic tube and a large chunk into a paper envelope. They performed DNA analysis on the pieces in the plastic tubes to determine whether they belonged to a snow leopard, wolf or some other carnivore, as well as to figure out if it was left by a male or a female. The researchers later examined the pieces in the envelopes for traces of fur to determine what the predator had eaten.
They collected more than 800 dung samples, but not every one was a winner. In a few cases they accidentally collected feces that belonged to a feral dog, a lynx or a brown bear. Among their fecal data set, they verified that 182 of their specimens belonged to snow leopards and 57 to wolves.
The researchers used water and mesh sieves to extract hair from the larger samples and manually took out bones, claws, feathers and plants. The team found that 27 percent of the snow leopard stool samples included domestic animals like horses and goats.
But by far the most popular animal that the spotted cats were dining on was the wild bharal, or Himalayan blue sheep. Traces of this big horned beast appeared in more than half of the samples. The researchers also found that livestock remains appeared in male droppings twice as often as in the specimens from females.
Dr. Chetri said that their findings would serve as the first step toward understanding how snow leopards affect the livestock of the rural peoples in the Himalayas. Their next steps are to determine the economic impact that the killings of farm animals have on the pasture herders, and then to develop strategies that will help reduce interactions between humans and the cats.
As the field work came to an end, Dr. Chetri experienced a frightening encounter.
“On the last day the snow leopard spotted me thinking maybe I was a prey,” he said. As he was hiding in the cliffs, the cat crawled closer until it was about 10 feet away. “I was really scared and I had to turn over and show it, ‘No, I’m not prey, I’m a human.’”
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