Shillong Times news Himachal Pradesh would be first state in Asia to have first Snow Leopard Research Centre and second after Mangolia where a lot of information has been collected about this wild animal. An amount of Rs 5.50 crore was sanctioned to set up this centre to study its population sample, habitat, behaviour and prey pattern. Under this project, a management plan was chalked out after identifying 4,000 sq Km landscape in Spiti valley where this wild animal has been seen in the past. The permission to install six radio collars was sought from the Minister of Environment and Forests. Radio collaring will help learning more about the habitat, range and behaviour of the snow leopards. “Radio collars will help in understanding the behavioural patterns of the snow leopard and the reasons for man-animal conflict. The collar would help to track pregnant leopards to solitary den sites in rocky slopes after the mating season in mid-March,” Davinder Chauhan, a wildlife official working on snow leopard conservation in the Spiti Valley said. So far state’s wildlife department is already monitoring the snow leopards through cameras in the Spiti Valley, located in line with Indo-Sino borders. With help of Mysore Nature Conservation Foundation, 60 automatic cameras have been laid in the valley. The presence of a sizable population of prey species like the Asiatic ibex – a wild goat species – the Himalayan blue sheep and the wolf indicates that the valley supports a good population of the wildcats. One of the cameras captured shots of a pack of dogs attacking a snow leopard. According to wildlife experts, the rise in the population of abandoned dogs might pose a threat to the snow leopards and their food chain. “The dogs usually attack in a pack and it’s easy for them to hunt even big mammals like the Himalayan blue sheep. This might reduce the prey base of the wild cat,” an expert said. (UNI) Great step taken by wwf in order to conserve the snow leopards.
Posted on: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 20:34:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015