Monitoring Illegal Trade in Snow leopards

Snow leopard has been identified as an indicator species of the health of mountain ecosystem in the south and central Asia. But due to rugged terrain and remoteness of the snow leopard habitat, lack of dedicated funding support at large scale, information on their ecology and their extent in the wildlife trade is generally poor. Similar to big cats, snow leopard also suffers from acute poaching. Keeping this in view, current study was conducted to document global magnitude of snow leopard in illegal trade. Global database from 2003 to 2014 and previous similar study has been compared to showcase the severity of pattern in the snow leopard illegal trade. Importantly, legal proceedings and conviction rate in the snow leopard illegal trade is an innovative outcome of the study. In the Global Snow leopard Conservation Forum-2013, all the snow leopard range countries expressed their concerns about snow leopard illegal trade but none of the countries have range-wide data on the snow leopard illegal trade. Therefore, current manuscript provides comprehensive information within and outside snow leopard natural range.