Koustubh Sharma

Snow Leopard Trust

The Four-horned Antelope is endemic to the Indian subcontinent and is defined as data deficient by IUCN. It is found mainly in forest habitats and is usually solitary. A four-year long study was conducted on the species in Panna National Park, Madhya Pradesh, during which behavioural observations were made using opportunistic focal sampling, mappin...

In the cold and arid mountains of Central Asia, where the diversity and abundance of wild ungulates are generally low, resource partitioning among coexisting carnivores is probably less distinct than in prey-rich areas. Thus, similar-sized carnivores are likely to compete for food. We compared the summer diets of snow leopards Panthera uncia and wo...

At the landscape level, the four-horned antelope is confined to tropical dry deciduous forests and within these, their distribution is patchy. Various factors have been proposed as determinants for their patchy distribution within landscapes, but none provided an adequate explanation. We hypothesized that availability of a constant supply of forage...

Population monitoring programmes and estimation of vital rates are key to understanding the mechanisms of population growth, decline or stability, and are important for effective conservation action. We report, for the first time, the population trends and vital rates of the endangered snow leopard based on camera trapping over four years in the To...

The Kyrgyz Republic is a mountainous with 94% of the country being above 1000 m and 41% above 3000 m. Snow leopards in Kyrgyzstan inhabit about 89,000 km2 and may number 300–350 individuals. Threats include poaching for skins and body parts, poaching and excess hunting of prey, and habitat fragmentation. While legal protection may have reduced trap...

Accurate population data of large carnivores is essential for their effective conservation planning, yet estimating population size is challenging due to their elusive and wide-ranging nature. China is estimated to encompass 60% of the snow leopard Panthera uncia habitat, marking it a crucial pillar for global snow leopard conservation. However, no...

Habitat degradation and heavy grazing by livestock are common conservation challenges across the steppes of Mongolia and Central Asia. Livestock grazing patterns are generally not uniform and are typically greater near campsites and watering holes. In this study, we examined how plant composition in a mountain steppe in southern Mongolia varied alo...

Mammalian carnivores are key to our understanding of ecosystem dynamics, but most of them are threatened with extinction all over the world. Conservating large carnivores is often an arduous task considering the complex relationship between humans and carnivores, and the diverse range and reasons of threats they face. Climate change is exacerbating...

COVID-19 lockdowns in early 2020 reduced human mobility, providing an opportunity to disentangle its effects on animals from those of landscape modifications. Using GPS data, we compared movements and road avoidance of 2300 terrestrial mammals (43 species) during the lockdowns to the same period in 2019. Individual responses were variable with no c...

Since the industrial revolution, the predominant model of economic development hasinvolved economies of scale and unsustainable exploitation of natural resources,leading to environmental degradation and the ongoing mass extinction of species. The environmental impacts of this development-for(the sake of)-development model led to biodiversity conser...

Community-based conservation efforts represent an important approach to facilitate the coexistence of people and wildlife. A concern, however, is that these efforts build on existing community structures and social norms, which are commonly dominated by men. Some biodiversity conservation approaches may consequently neglect women’s voices and deepe...

The big cats (genus Panthera) represent some of the most popular and charismatic species on the planet. Although some reference genomes are available for this clade, few are at the chromosome level, inhibiting high-resolution genomic studies. We assembled genomes from three members of the genus, the tiger (Panthera tigris), the snow leopard (Panthe...

The big cats (genus Panthera ) represent some of the most popular and charismatic species on the planet. Although some reference genomes are available for this clade, few are at the chromosome level, inhibiting high-resolution genomic studies. Here, we assemble genomes from three members of the genus, the tiger ( Panthera tigris ), the snow leopard...

Aim Snow leopards are distributed across the mountains of 12 countries spread across 1.8 million km² in Central and South Asia. Previous efforts to map snow leopard distributions have relied on expert opinions and modelling of presence-only data. Expert opinion is subjective and its reliability is difficult to assess, while analyses of presence-onl...

We explore the role of community-based conservation (CBC) in the sustainable management of conservation conflicts by examining the experiences of conservation practitioners trying to address conflicts between snow leopard conservation and pastoralism in Asian mountains. Practitioner experiences are examined through the lens of the PARTNERS principl...

Spatial capture-recapture (SCR) models are commonly used to estimate animal density from surveys on which detectors passively detect animals without physical capture, for example using camera traps, hair snares, or microphones. An individual is more likely to be recorded by detectors close to its activity center, the centroid of its movement throug...

Mongolia is considered the stronghold of the Pallas’s cat (Otocolobus manul Pallas, 1776) populations. The species is thought to be widely distributed across Mongolia’s mountain steppes. However, the ecology and regional distribution of this species remain poorly known. In June 2018, we carried out an interview-based survey to estimate the current...

The endangered snow leopard Panthera uncia occurs in human use landscapes in the mountains of South and Central Asia. Conservationists generally agree that snow leopards must be conserved through a land-sharing approach, rather than land-sparing in the form of strictly protected areas. Effective conservation through land-sharing requires a good und...

Co‐occurrence of ungulates in multi‐species assemblages has fascinated ecologists because these species seemingly belong to the same guild – feeding on plants. Across large parts of the high mountains of Central Asia, ibex ( Capra sibirica ) and argali ( Ovis ammon ), both predominantly grazers, co‐occur at local and regional scales. However, littl...

1. Camera trapping is a widely employed tool in wildlife research, used to estimate animal abundances, understand animal movement, assess species richness and understand animal behaviour. In addition to images of wild animals, research cameras often record human images, inadvertently capturing behaviours ranging from innocuous actions to potentiall...

1. Spatial capture-recapture (SCR) methods use the location of detectors (camera traps, hair snares, live-capture traps) and the locations at which animals were detected (their spatial capture histories) to estimate animal density. Despite the often large expense and effort involved in placing detectors in a landscape, there has been relatively lit...

Significant knowledge gaps persist on snow leopard demography and reproductive behavior. From a GPS-collared population in Mongolia, we estimated the timing of mating, parturition and independence. Based on three mother-cub pairs, we describe the separation phase of the cub from its mother as it gains independence. Snow leopards mated from January-...

Understanding abundance and distribution of species is often necessary for wildlife conservation. However, elusive species such as the leopard (Panthera pardus) that have wide geographical distribution and typically low abundance pose a constant challenge to conservationists due to logistical and methodological constraints. Although leopard abundan...

17 The endangered snow leopard Panthera uncia occurs in human use landscapes in the mountains of 18 South and Central Asia. Conservationists generally agree that snow leopards must be conserved 19 through a land-sharing approach, rather than land-sparing in the form of strictly protected areas. 20 Effective conservation through land-sharing require...

PAWS aims to produce a robust estimate of the snow leopard’s population status

Some mammalian species that inhabit cold environments are known to eat snow to fulfill their water requirements. However, there is a potential trade-off between eating snow and drinking water because of the considerable energy that the body invests in warming the ingested snow. It is claimed that the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) eats snow to fulfi...

The snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is an apex predator on the Tibetan Plateau and in the surrounding mountain ranges. It is listed as Vulnerable in the IUCN's Red List. The large home range and low population densities of this species mandate range-wide conservation prioritization. Two efforts for range-wide snow leopard conservation planning have b...

Accurate assessments of the status of threatened species and their conservation planning require reliable estimation of their global populations and robust monitoring of local population trends. We assessed the adequacy and suitability of studies in reliably estimating the global snow leopard (Panthera uncia) population. We compiled a dataset of al...

Although abundance estimates have a strong bearing on the conservation status of a species, less than 2% of the global snow leopard distribution range has been sampled systematically, mostly in small survey areas. In order to estimate snow leopard density across a large landscape, we collected 347 putative snow leopard scats from 246 transects (490...

Measurements of morphometry and locomotion of wild animals yield information about multiple aspects of a species’ ecology, evolution and conservation biology. However, it is limited to measure the morphometry and locomotion of elusive species due to lack of appropriate methods. Regarding image analysis, stereo vision is the commonly-used technique...

Natural resource use and extraction from protected areas are often believed to impact native wildlife populations. In the mountains of the Nepal Himalaya, extraction of the Chinese caterpillar fungus Cordyceps sinensis, a highly valued parasitic fungus, is a dominant form of natural resource extraction activities. However, nature and extent of ecol...

Accurate estimates of ecological state variables such as population density provide key metrics for monitoring population changes over time in response to changes in environmental conditions or protection regimes. These changes can be defined in terms of habitat use, abundance or distribution. One can define habitat use as a hierarchical process in...

Understanding species distributions, patterns of change and threats can form the basis for assessing the conservation status of elusive species that are difficult to survey. The snow leopard Panthera uncia is the top predator of the Central and South Asian mountains. Knowledge of the distribution and status of this elusive felid and its wild prey i...

Snow leopards and people have shared Asia’s mountain landscapes for millennia. Pastoralism is the predominant land use in Asia’s high mountains, and across the range, agro-pastoral and pastoral communities inhabit and use snow leopard landscapes. They rely on ecosystem services – the benefits that humans derive from nature – which in turn depend on...

The snow leopard is an important symbol of healthy mountain ecosystems and the communities living there, yet this cat is under threat of extinction across its range. Hundreds of millions of people depend on these landscapes for water, hydropower, agriculture, mineral resources, medicinal products, cultural traditions and spiritual values, and inspi...

Large amount of data are being constantly generated by various government and non-government agencies across the world. Most of these datasets are at best used to provide trends and patterns without any attention to the uncertainties caused by imperfect detectability. In absence of empirical estimation of detection probabilities, the inferences are...

Snow leopards in Kyrgyzstan inhabit an estimated 89,000 km 2 . The Snow Leopard Survival Strategy estimates 300–350 individuals for the whole country. Key threats include killing of snow leopards for their skins and other parts, intentional and incidental trapping, poaching of the prey base, and habitat fragmentation. Although legal protection may...

The Endangered snow leopard Panthera uncia occurs in the Central Asian Mountains, which cover c. 2 million sq km. Little is known about its status in the Kyrgyz Alay Mountains, a relatively narrow stretch of habitat connecting the southern and northern global ranges of the species. In 2010 we gathered information on current and past (1990, the last...

The chousingha belongs to the Boselaphini tribe. This is one of the three tribes that constitute the subfamily Bovinae within the family Bovidae. Members of the Boselaphini tribe are the last survivors of a form which is very similar to that of the ancestors of the entire subfamily. Both species belonging to this tribe, that is, the nilgai and the...

Snow leopard is a felid, highly adapted to the cold and rugged mountain ecosystem where it lives. Distributed across the mountains of 12 countries in Central Asia, approximately 4,000-7,000 snow leopards are surviving today and their population is believed to be declining. Due to the difficult terrain that it inhabits, it has been little studied an...

Snow leopards Panthera uncia are under threat across their range and require urgent conservation actions based on sound science. However, their remote habitat and cryptic nature make them inherently difficult to study and past attempts have provided insufficient information upon which to base effective conservation. Further, there has been no stati...

Tetracerus quadricornis (de Blainville, 1816) is 1 of the smallest Asian bovids and commonly is called the four-horned antelope or chousingha. It is endemic to Peninsular India and small parts of lowland Nepal. T. quadricornis is a sexually dimorphic boselaphid of small stature; only males have horns, with 2 of the 3 recognized subspecies having 2...

Data on animal and biomass densities of Tiger prey were collected using Distance Sampling in Panna Tiger Reserve, India. Line transect surveys for Distance Sampling were conducted in 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005 using different approaches. Animal and biomass densities from 2003 are compared with estimates available from other reserves of the Indian su...