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September 14, 2007|Volume 36, Number 2


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This snow leopard was photographed in captivity. In the wild they are notoriously elusive and hard to track.



F&ES student working to insure
survival of the snow leopard

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of Environment: Yale, a publication of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. The publication is online at http://environment.yale.edu/doc/4897/environment_yale_magazine.


When he first came across a paw print of a snow leopard, Shafqat Hussain was hiking high above the tree line in what’s often called “Little Tibet,” the Baltistan region of Pakistan’s Northern Areas near Kashmir. The track, large and wide like the snowshoes used to manage the snows of Central Asia’s high peaks, was but a few hours old. Hussain bent down to press his face to the indentation.

“I still don’t know why I did it,” says Hussain, an economist-turned-environmental-activist who is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and in the Department of Anthropology. “I just got this wonderful feeling, to connect, to see that ‘Oh, this animal was right here.’ The snow leopard has a mythical feel to it.”

Generations from now, people may still be able to have that sort of experience, thanks in part to an inventive insurance program Hussain designed to protect the cats, which have been on the World Conservation Union (IUCN) list of endangered species since 1972. The plan seeks to discourage villagers from killing snow leopards that occasionally attack their herds. Many studies have concluded that these retaliatory killings of snow leopards remain one of the greatest threats to the survival of the species in the wild.

Last October, Rolex SA, the Swiss watch company, recognized Hussain’s Project Snow Leopard as truly innovative, naming him one of five associate laureates of the Rolex Awards for Enterprise. The awards, presented every other year since 1976, recognize and support pioneering work that advances human knowledge and well-being. The 2006 awards committee picked Hussain’s project from a pool of 1,671 entries from 117 countries, also granting him $50,000 to continue his work. Five laureates received $100,000 awards.

“Shafqat Hussain’s project deserves support, because it touches a worldwide issue — predators versus human attempts to preserve their livestock,” says Mark Shuttleworth, a South African technology entrepreneur and one of the 2006 Rolex judges.

As they roam the forbidding peaks of Central Asia, snow leopards face threats from many fronts. Though trade in snow leopards is banned by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, their pelts bring high prices on the black market, often equivalent to an entire year’s income for a mountain villager. In booming East Asia, their various body parts are increasingly prized as ingredients for traditional medicines. At the same time, subsistence herders with growing families push their animals higher and higher up the mountain slopes to find more forage for their flocks. This has the effect of taking food away from wild prey species like blue sheep (bharal).

As wild prey populations decrease, leop-,ards sometimes have no choice but to venture down from their mountaintops to hunt at village elevations, especially in winter when food is scarce. Occasionally, a leopard will get into a pen and become frenzied, killing dozens of animals at once. Understandably, these losses enrage villagers, who live close to the edge both physically and economically and for whom the taking of even one goat or sheep is a devastating blow.

Around the world, various insurance schemes have attempted to insure locals against livestock killings by endangered predators like lions and snow leopards, with little long-term success. “There’s a history of insurance programs failing,” explains Brad Rutherford, executive director of the Seattle-based International Snow Leopard Trust. “Typically, they’re set up by the government, underfunded and undermonitored. Soon there are too many claims and not enough money. Then the program goes bust, and villagers end up being even more angry at the animal you’re trying to protect.”

To try to move beyond this flawed dynamic, Hussain hit upon an original, two-pronged strategy: First, he set up a village-administered livestock co-insurance arrangement that discourages fraud; then, he linked the insurance system to a snow leopard ecotourism venture. The pooled money from locals, plus income from the tourists, helps make the program self-sustaining. In good years, the funds may even support community improvement projects like building wells and upgrading sheep corrals. “We got all the villagers to participate,” Hussain explains. “And we’ve had no complaints that losses were not verified or that claims have been fraudulent.”

Project Snow Leopard has been so successful in the villages of the Skoyo and Basha valleys, where it has been instituted, that Hussain is fielding inquiries from all over the world. He juggles these calls while also finishing his thesis at F&ES, writing an historical analysis of the changing conception of nature and society in the Hunza region. Organizations in India, Nepal and Mongolia are either cooperating with Project Snow Leopard or starting their own programs modeled on his approach.

The snow leopard, if you can catch a glimpse of one, is a graceful predator, with a luminous soft grey coat marked with rosettes of black on brown and a long tail that helps it to balance and also doubles as a muffler in bitter weather. A bridge species between smaller felines like bobcats and great cats like lions and tigers, the leopard rules at the top of the food chain in the mountain ecosystems that include famous peaks like K2 and Mount Everest.

No one is sure exactly how many snow leopards (Uncia uncia) remain in the wild. The accepted estimates range from 3,000 to 7,000. Only two population studies of the animals in Pakistan have ever been attempted — one in 1974 by noted biologist George Schaller (now director of science for the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society) and another by Hussain in 2003. Most scientists believe that the snow leopard’s numbers are decreasing mainly because of poaching and reprisals from locals. That’s difficult to prove definitively, though, since populations are estimated by indirect evidence, such as tracks, interviews with locals and the remains of kills.

The cat is so reclusive and hard to track that it has taken on an aura of myth. Only two Westerners have seen snow leopards in the wild since 1950. Author Peter Matthiessen wandered around the Himalayas with Schaller for a year hoping to see one. He ended up with a famous book, “The Snow Leopard,” but never set eyes on the object of his search.

“It’s so incredibly rarely seen, so elusive,” says Rodney Jackson, founder and director of the Snow Leopard Conservancy, based in Sonoma, California. “But if you protect a few snow leopards, you also protect everything in their large habitat — the plants, the mammals, everything.”

Hussain, who grew up the son of a civil servant in Lahore, Pakistan, didn’t set out to crusade for the snow leopard. He came to the United States to study economics at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, he returned to Pakistan to work in the Northern Areas for the Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP). He lived in Skardu, a town of 50,000 that mountaineers and trekkers use as a staging area for expeditions to the many 26,000-foot peaks in the nearby Western Himalaya, Hindu Kush and Karakorum ranges. In addition to tourism, the local economy depends on the production and trade of dried apricots, walnuts and almonds.


F&ES student Shafqat Hussain (far right) talks to members of the Hushey community in Pakistan about his program, which aims to prevent retaliatory killings of the snow leopard, which has been on the endangered species list since 1972.



AKRSP, Hussain says, focused on small infrastructure projects that would increase agricultural productivity: better water channels, better varieties of seeds, better farming practices. Hussain worked as a monitoring and evaluation officer, traveling through the region and judging the success of various programs. “My job was to go out in the field and talk to villagers,” Hussain says. “I would get their feedback, ask them whether programs were working or not. Villagers often complained about the depredations of wild animals. But our work had nothing to do with that.”

At the same time, in the late 1990s, the ,IUCN began a multi-million-dollar, seven-year project to conserve wildlife in the area. In concert with the wildlife department of the Northern Areas region, the IUCN focused on large ungulates, like the Himalayan ibex (Capra ibex sibirica), markhor (Capra falconeri) and a local species of wild goat. The goal was to blend conservation with a trophy-hunting program that would show locals the value of saving these species.

That was great for the public appreciation of these wild grazing animals, Hussain noticed, but not so great for the snow leopard. As Hussain traveled through the stone, mud and wood villages of this dry, remote region, he kept hearing that locals were amazed by how much foreign trophy hunters would pay: up to $5,000 to bag an ibex and up to $50,000 for a markhor.

“Of course, if a snow leopard killed one, the villagers got nothing,” Hussain explains. “The villagers said, ‘This animal kills not only our goats but these precious animals, the ibex and markhor.’ They started persecuting the snow leopard. Of course, it was illegal. But in those remote regions, who’s going to know? I asked the villagers about the snow leopard. They said, ‘We have nothing against it, but if it attacks our goats, we lose a substantial part of our livelihood. If someone compensated us for our loss, then we would leave the leopard alone.’”

Hussain tried to get conservation and development groups to incorporate the snow leopard into their plans, but he got nowhere. Then, in 1998, he got a grant from the London-based Whitley Fund for Nature at the Royal Geographical Society. That money allowed him to start Project Snow Leopard the same year. He chose to focus on the Skoyo valley, where about 400 Balti people carve out a living, tilling fields and orchards in the valley and herding goats and sheep on the nearby mountain slopes, which are also ideal snow leopard habitat.

Hussain consulted with the villagers, and together they devised a locally supported insurance plan. “We asked the villagers to pay a small annual premium for livestock, 15 rupees, about 1% of the value of the goat. Each year, the village loses 1% to 2% of the herd from snow leopard attacks. When we told them that Project Snow Leopard would also chip in money, they all agreed. Villagers administer the funds and investigate claims.”

With input from the villagers, Hussain designed clever checks and balances to discourage cheating and encourage cooperation. The Village Insurance Committee rotates membership every two years, so that no one family or person can dominate. All the premium money goes into a pot called “Fund 1,” where each villager’s contributions are recorded and kept separate. Meanwhile, Hussain founded an ecotourism company, Full Moon Night Trekking, to market snow leopard treks. A portion of the money from that venture — 70,000 Pakistani rupees, or $1,151, in 2007 — goes into another pot, called “Fund 2.” All the money in Fund 2 is held in common by the village. The trekking company also employs two villagers as guides.

If a villager loses a goat to a snow leopard, the system springs into action this way: “First villagers have to verify the kill and the value of the animal. Then they look to Fund 1 and see how much that person has contributed. The person first gets reimbursed from his own contributions. If he’s put in 300 rupees, he gets back those 300 rupees. The balance, if any, of the value of the lost animal comes from Fund 2, which everyone owns in common,” Hussain explains.

“It’s a psychological thing,” he continues. “The villagers monitor each other. It’s not in their interest to verify a fraudulent claim, because they would have to draw from Fund 2. They would not want to do that, because they’d be making someone rich by making themselves poor.”

Word of Hussain’s insurance plan has spread through the mountains, and he’s gotten lots of inquiries from village leaders. “We got so much enthusiasm from the villages, but we didn’t have the resources and manpower to expand,” Hussain says. With the Rolex Award money, Project Snow Leopard can expand into six more valleys, improve guarding pens and maintain a system of unmanned cameras to try to better monitor the population of snow leopards.

Jackson says he is optimistic that Hussain’s model can be used throughout the snow leopard range. “Hussain talks to the villagers,” Jackson says. “What’s most important about his work is that he thinks in anthropological terms. That’s an area that’s been sorely neglected by biologists designing conservation programs.”

— By Heather Millar


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