Snow Leopards Need a Protected Range Three Times the Size of Manhattan, Study Says

Snow Leopard

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Big Cat Week, which kicked off Sunday, is part of National Geographic's Big Cats Initiative, an effort to stop poaching, protect habitats and save several species of big cats. 

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Story Highlights

Researchers have found that snow leopards' protected ranges are too small.

Just one snow leopard can roam an area three times the size of Manhattan and larger than the island of Aruba.

As populations continue to expand, maintaining the habitats of large creatures becomes increasingly difficult. The stealthy snow leopard isn’t easy to track down, but a recent study has found that the large carnivores are running out of room to survive. 

According to the study, almost 40 percent of all protected areas across the species’ range is too small to even support a pair of breeding snow leopards. Less than 15 percent and likely as little as 3 to 4 percent of all the animal’s protected areas are large enough to host 15 breeding females. Across 170 protected areas in Asia, only 8 have enough space to support 50 or more breeding females. 

“Previous studies had mostly assumed smaller home ranges, and of course that influences everything from population estimates to conservation strategies,” study leader Örjan Johansson told National Geographic. “These findings underline that we need a lot more information on the snow leopard.” 

With the help of GPS collars, the researchers tracked 16 snow leopards in the Tost Mountains of South Gob, Mongolia, to calculate the size of their home range, according to the study. They discovered that overlapping of the ranges was low, suggesting that the animals are territorial. 

The leopards’ average home range from the study area is 77 square miles for males and 46 square miles for females, the Snow Leopard Trust reports. This means that a male snow leopard can roam an area about 3.5 times the size of Manhattan and larger than the island of Aruba. 

The big cats travel so far because their surroundings aren’t particularly abundant when it comes to finding food. Snow leopards live in mountainous countries where large prey is hard to come across, meaning they have to roam great distances in an effort to track down prey. 

“This means that any cats living in these areas will also regularly use surrounding areas that are unprotected,” Johansson told the Trust. “We can’t simply assume they’re safe and sound just because their habitat falls within a Protected Area.”

Roaming into unprotected areas can be problematic for the leopards, as they can come across domestic livestock. 

When the leopards prey on livestock, the animals’ owners typically retaliate by hunting them, National Geographic also reports. 

According to The International Union for Conservation of Nature, retaliatory killings are one of the big cats’ main threats. Less than 7,000 of the endangered species are left across the globe. 

“Our study illustrates that protected areas alone will not be able to conserve predators with large home ranges and conservationists and managers should not restrict their efforts to land sparing,” wrote the researchers.