Snow Leopard Population Discovered in Afghanistan

Snow Leopard Population Discovered in Afghanistan

The Wildlife Conservation Society has discovered a surprisingly healthy population of rare snow leopards living in the mountainous reaches of northeastern Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor, according to a new study.

Good news to wake up to. I always smile when I hear about a new, healthy population of animals that are rare and endangered discovered to be doing well. The article states that the population of snow leopards have declined up to 20% in the past 16 years and have been declared endangered.

(I apologize in advance if this is in the wrong forum, endangered species to me = fragile Earth)

This isnt the first ive heard of this, its not just been 'discovered' I remember watching a show quite a few months ago where a british guy went into northern afghanistan, completely unprotected, & he stayed with some native tribesman up there, who hunt these rare snow leapards for a living, wish i could remember the name, i had never heard of the chap before, but he was pretty crazy lol, he could have been killed by anyone, no police out there, or captured by taliban, or anything really !

Oh great! Someone who hunts snow leopards for a living! I volunteer at a wildlife center. We have had 2 beautiful snow leopards in the past that someone had kept as pets. It was awful to watch them cope with our North Carolina summers, even though they both had "air conditioned" enclosures.

I heard one of our experts say that we were members of an extremely small group who had even laid eyes on one of these magnificent creatures, much less hand fed one, as they are so rare.

Just another case of man doing what he does best....

reply to post by Vanishr


I think we both saw the same programme. In the programme that I saw it was a reasonably well known Scottish photographer, when I say well known this guy always seems to be in nature programmes doing the photography, and the footage that he got was absolutely wonderful to watch.

Long and hard hours were put into this and those hours were well worth the effort in the end.

Its wonderful to hear / see rare animals have a foothold in places where they are normally not thought to be. I just hope that they get the protection that they deserve.

Edit: I did a quick search for the photographer, his name is Gordon Buchanan and the footage he got was from Bhutan.

reply to post by Ficargul


Iam not sure if he was scottish or a photographer lol i just cant rememember ! I just remember he was a brit and he was out there with just a cameraman & he was just hunting for snow leopards, not in the sense of killing them he just wanted to find and see one, but the Afghani native he was with was hunting them.