IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Riordan, P.; Kun, S. | |
| The snow leopard in China | |
| 2010 Cat News (Special Issue 5): 14-17 | |
The snow leopard _Panthera uncia _occurs within 12 countries across Central Asia. The secretive nature of this rare species, and the inaccessibility and harshness of the areas in which it exists have precluded accurate population assessments across their entire range. It is estimated that China contains approximately 60% of the potential habitat available to snow leopards (McCarthy & Chapron 2003). The importance of China for snow leopard conservation is an echo of the scale of the country itself. The vast size and diversity of China, together with unparalleled social and economic change, present a myriad of complexities and challenges for conservation. As an amplified clarion for the world, the complex and changing interface between people and wildlife in China demands our attention. China is the central country of the snow leopard's global distribution. Its known range in China is over a million kmý, and this area borders to all of the other eleven snow leopard range states. The significance for the conservation of snow leopards that they primarily inhabit areas with often sensitive political boundaries is not to be under-estimated. The constraints this places on developing range-wide conservation strategies and the necessity of securing high-level political dialogue make our task all the harder. Beijing Forestry University and the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford University, together with the State Forestry Administration of China (SFA) are working to develop both national and regional action plans for the conservation of snow leopards in China, with input from experts within the Snow Leopard Network, Panthera and the Snow Leopard Trust. |
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