- A snow leopard found in Nepal’s lowland at the start of the year will remain at Kathmandu’s Central Zoo, officials have announced.
- The juvenile male has recovered from injuries it had when it was found, and currently occupies a temperature-controlled quarantine shelter at the zoo.
- A committee formed by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation recommended that the snow leopard should not be released back into the wild due to its prolonged captivity.
- Six months since its capture, there’s still no consensus as to how the mountain-dwelling snow leopard ended up in the plains, with theories ranging from natural dispersal to escape from traffickers.
KATHMANDU — A Himalayan-dwelling snow leopard that somehow wound up in Nepal’s lowland plains at the start of the year will not be released back into the wild and will instead remain at Kathmandu’s Central Zoo, officials have said.
The juvenile male snow leopard (Panthera uncia) was found injured on Jan. 23 on the outskirts of the town of Urlabari. The discovery came as a surprise to locals and conservationists alike, given that Urlabari lies in Nepal’s “tiger country,” at an elevation of 146 meters (480 feet), whereas snow leopards in Nepal have only ever been recorded at elevations higher than 2,000 m (6,600 ft).
The big cat was subsequently captured and sent to Kathmandu for treatment.
“The animal has recovered from injuries to its right foreleg and can now stand upright,” said Naresh Subedi, member-secretary at the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC), the semigovernmental body that manages Central Zoo.
A committee formed by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation to assess what to do with the animal, and find out why it was so far down from its mountain habitat, has decided to keep it at the zoo.
“The committee recommended that the animal shouldn’t be released into the wild,” said Shyam Kumar Shah, information officer at the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation.
Because the zoo doesn’t have air-conditioned facilities available for the snow leopard, the animal remains in its quarantine shelter where authorities can adjust the temperature required for the snow leopard to survive.
“We are also working on building a new cage for the snow leopard,” Subedi said, adding the work hasn’t gathered pace yet as the government hasn’t formally notified the zoo that the snow leopard will be staying there permanently.
The zoo feeds it chicken six times a week and puts it on a fast on Saturdays, according to spokesperson Ganesh Koirala.
“We recommended that the animal shouldn’t be released into the wild as it has been in captivity for a long time and it would be difficult for it to adapt to natural conditions,” Madhu Chetri, a member of the committee, told Mongabay.
Chetri and his team also carried out tests on samples taken from the snow leopard. “We have found some interesting results that will soon be published in a scientific journal,” he said.
Chetri is one of two leading conservationists serving on the committee, alongside Karan Bahadur Shah, a professor at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu. At the outset of their investigation, they proposed differing explanations for how the snow leopard ended up in the plains: Chetri attributed it to the animal simply getting lost during its travels, while Shah suggested it may have escaped from wildlife traffickers.
Since then, however, “the committee couldn’t reach a consensus on the possible explanation as to how the animal landed in Urlabari in the absence of scientific evidence,” Shah told Mongabay.
He added he was also in favor of keeping the animal at the zoo for educational purposes. “We need to keep animals that are found in the country in the zoo so that the general people are also aware of the biodiversity of the country,” he said.
Snow leopards are the most elusive of the big cats, and are found at extreme altitudes in the steep mountainous areas of a dozen countries in Central and South Asia, ranging from Uzbekistan in the west to China in the east.
Their global population, spread over altitudes of 500-5,800 m (1,640-19,000 ft), is estimated to be between 3,900 and 6,000; detailed coordinated surveys of the populations in the range countries are yet to be carried out. In Nepal, their population is divided into three blocks (eastern, central and western) totaling an estimated 301-400 animals.
Banner image: A snow leopard found in Urlabari town in Nepal’s plains in a cage before it was transported to Lalitpur. Image courtesy of NTNC
Abhaya Raj Joshi is a staff writer for Nepal at Mongabay. Find him on 𝕏 @arj272.
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