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New Delhi: A three-year camera trapping study has confirmed year-round presence and breeding activity of snow leopards in Jammu & Kashmir, especially the significance of Kishtwar Himalayas that provide an important habitat for snow leopards and several other threatened mammals.

Posted By: Jaydatt Chaudhary Posted On: Aug 30, 2025Share Article
New Delhi: A three-year camera trapping study has confirmed year-round presence and breeding activity of snow leopards in Jammu & Kashmir, especially the significance of Kishtwar Himalayas that provide an important habitat for snow leopards and several other threatened mammals.

New Delhi: A three-year camera trapping study has confirmed year-round presence and breeding activity of snow leopards in Jammu & Kashmir, especially the significance of Kishtwar Himalayas that provide an important habitat for snow leopards and several other threatened mammals.

Conducted between 2022 and 2025 across the Kishtwar Himalayas, the survey was launched under the nationwide Snow Leopard Population Assessment in India (SPAI) protocol. While earlier years confirmed the presence of snow leopards in the UT in summer and autumn, for the first time, the 2024–25 phase brought new insights — recording snow leopards during winter months in both Paddar (Jammu division) and Zojila (Kashmir division). This suggests year-round use of the landscape, a critical indicator of stable habitat and a resident population, the survey said.

The survey also documented 16 mammal species, including the rare Himalayan brown bear, Himalayan wolf, common leopard, Kashmir musk deer, stone marten, pika, Asiatic ibex, and red fox. In some instances, both snow leopards and common leopards were detected at the same camera locations in Paddar, raising important questions about species interactions and the possible impact of climate change on range shifts, the authors said.

“We conducted systematic camera trapping across three sites in the Kishtwar landscape — Kishtwar HighAltitude National Park (KHANP), Paddar and Warwan. We detected a minimum of 12 individual snow leopards in 22 camera traps. Combining SECR estimates with raw counts from 2023, we estimate snow leopard numbers to be up to 20 adult individuals in our study area,” the report said.

“These findings reaffirm the importance of Jammu & Kashmir as a key snow leopard stronghold. It is time to treat the Kishtwar Himalayas not as isolated valleys, but as part of an interconnected conservation landscape,” said Shahid Hameed, Wildlife Research and Project Coordinator at NCF.

“Much of the credit must go to the continued commitment of the Jammu and Kashmir Wildlife Department to conserve their high-altitude homes,” he added.

With glacial melting in the Greater Himalayas occurring at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the planet, snow leopard habitat is severely threatened. This could potentially escalate the intensity and frequency of snow leopard and human interactions. Elaborate studies of human-snow leopard conflict, incorporating livestock-wild ungulate interactions and climate change, might also prove useful for snow leopard conservation, the study has flagged.

The survey also included a landscape-level threat assessment based on interviews with over 300 households across Paddar, Warwan, Dacchan and Marwah. Livestock depredation and crop damage emerged as major challenges impacting the primary livelihood of the locals, with need for more context-specific mitigation strategies. These losses shape community attitudes towards wildlife and demand the need for conflict resolution interventions.

HT reported on February 1, 2024, there are around 718 snow leopards in the country, the first ever population estimation exercise of the vulnerable species by the Snow Leopard Population Assessment in India (SPAI) Program has found. During the assessment conducted from 2019 to 2023, a total of 241 unique Snow leopards were photographed. Based on the analysis, Ladakh has the highest estimated population of the animal (477) followed by Uttarakhand (124), Himachal Pradesh (51), Arunachal Pradesh (36), Sikkim (21), and Jammu and Kashmir (9).

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