With almost thirty years of experience in the field, Dr. Rodney Jackson is the leading expert on snow leopards and their habitat. He received the 1981 Rolex Award for Enterprise for his groundbreaking radio-tracking study of snow leopards in Nepal. He was the first to radio collar a snow leopard in the wild and pioneered the standardization of snow leopard tracking methods.

Rodney is active in international forums, contributing the understanding and knowledge he has gleaned from his years of field experience.  He prepared the snow leopard section of the IUCN-World Conservation Union’s Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan for Cats, the definitive document delineating the needs and opportunities for preservation of the earth’s remaining wild cats.  He currently sits on the IUCN’s Cat Specialist Core Group.

Rodney founded Snow Leopard Conservancy (SLC) in 2000.  The organization is based on both his scientific knowledge about the snow leopard and on his extensive experience working with rural herders and farmers.  SLC is founded upon the conviction that the people whose lives are most closely connected to a species hold the key to its survival.

The strikingly beautiful snow leopard remains one of the world's most mysterious cats. Rarely sighted, it inhabits the high mountains of Central Asia over an expansive twelve-country range. Although snow leopards pose no threat to humans, they are hunted as a result of preying on livestock. They are also endangered due to loss of habitat and poaching for their pelt and bones.

Snow leopards most often lose their lives as a result of conflict with human communities.  Local herders kill snow leopards believed to threaten their livestock, either preventatively or in retaliation for animal losses.  Villagers in the Central Asian highlands depend on their sheep and goats to supply their family’s meat, dairy products, and wool.  Losing their livestock to snow leopards imperils their sustenance.

The conflict over livestock is rooted in loss of habitat.  When families with growing domestic herds move into snow leopard habitat, they crowd out native prey.  Snow leopards then target domestic stock as an attractive alternate source of food.  Herds are particularly vulnerable to snow leopard attacks when corralled in traditional roughly-built stone pens that are easy for the cats to penetrate.

In a region of limited economic opportunity, there is high incentive for illegal poaching.  A snow leopard hide with fur may produce several times the monthly income for a needy family.  Active markets for their luxurious pelts exist worldwide, particularly in Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Russia.  The snow leopard is also hunted for its bones and other body parts for use in traditional Asian medicine.   

The Snow Leopard Conservancy (SLC) engages local people in a discussion of their needs and ideas on how to live harmoniously with snow leopards. SLC builds upon traditional beliefs and empowers communities to benefit economically by maintaining a balanced ecosystem for the snow leopard. Employment, education and alternative-income projects, such as tourist homestay lodging, are the cornerstone of SLC's success.

SLC takes a broad and creative approach to building local support for conservation while studying the cats in the wild.  Its programs serve as a model for community-based conservation and bolster the snow leopard’s chance for survival.

Livestock Protection

Building a predator-proof corral for livestock

Communities depend on their livestock for meat, wool, milk, cheese, butter, fertilizer and fuel.  Thus, protecting livestock is fundamental to reducing revenge killings of snow leopards.  SLC works cooperatively with herders to construct predator-proof corrals and provides information on improved animal husbandry and guarding practices.  Programs are being developed to immunize and insure livestock.  Protection of the snow leopard’s natural prey base through the creation of special wildlife areas also serves to prevent deaths of the wild felines from predator-livestock conflict.

Eco-tourism as Alternative Income

Homestay for tourists

Snow Leopard Conservancy assists communities that are dependent on herding in developing alternative revenue flows to reduce the economic impact of loss of livestock to snow leopard predation. Eco-tourism can provide essential alternative income while empowering local people to benefit directly from a balanced ecosystem.

Toward this end, SLC supports local women in operating traditional Himalayan Homestays for tourists. Guests are immersed in the local culture, staying in comfortable bedrooms furnished in the traditional style and sitting down with the host family to eat traditional meals prepared by the house mother. Local pastoralists also operate “Parachute Cafes” for trekkers (under tents made from recycled army surplus parachutes) in which solar cookers contribute to an ecologically-sustainable operation. As part of the homestay program, SLC also encourages the villagers to learn about their local flora and fauna so that they can act as nature guides to visitors.

The homestays have helped to transform the perception of the snow leopard as a dangerous menace to livestock to an animal who entices travelers and creates economic opportunities. While providing essential financial support for the host families, 10% of all homestay income goes into a collective conservation fund for each village. This money is used for such projects as cleaning up litter, repainting stupas (Buddhist worship statues), keeping up gompas (Buddhist monasteries), planting trees, and fixing up communal buildings and fences.

Conservation Education

One of SLC’s highest priorities is education and training for the up-and-coming generation of conservationists, the children who live in the snow leopard’s range countries.  SLC works through a network of local teachers, teacher-trainers and nonprofit organizations to bring conservation to life for students.  Tools for learning include books about snow leopards and their habitat, colorful posters, games and field trips.  Lessons are creative and interactive.  SLC has helped to organize programs in which students and teachers from one village visit those in another to share their knowledge and interest in conservation. 

Community-driven Solutions

Photo from PhotoVoice project

In order to take root, conservation solutions must be grounded in the true aspirations of local communities.  In Tajikistan, SLC worked on a project that enabled individuals to record and reflect their community’s needs in relation to snow leopard conservation.  In the PhotoVoice project, adults and children alike were provided with cameras to take photographs of the most important things in their lives.  They chose family, water, livestock, food and yak droppings (their main source of fuel and fertilizer).  Their photographs are fostering dialogue and inspiring conservation solutions befitting of both wildlife and people.

Cutting-edge Research

Setting camera trap in northern Pakistan

The more knowledge about the behaviors and habitat requirements of the snow leopard, the more effectively programs can be implemented to conserve the species.  SLC engages in ongoing study of the high mountain cats in their natural environment, using remote cameras to record natural behaviors and help to identify individual snow leopards.  Dr. Rodney Jackson and his team have recorded behaviors never before seen in the wild, enhancing our understanding of this very elusive wild feline.

In the snow leopard’s rugged and often inaccessible habitat, SLC is using sophisticated GPS-satellite collars that allow up-to-the-minute monitoring of a snow leopard’s position and movements from thousands of miles away.  Corridor analysis is a central focus of inquiry.  Through its research, SLC is identifying corridors of land used by snow leopards to navigate between separated protected areas.  Critical corridors are then targeted for protection through community-based conservation efforts.

Fecal DNA sampling is another new technology SLC employs to facilitate snow leopard and prey species status surveys, baseline inventories, and assessments which provide the scientific basis for sound conservation planning.  With this methodology it is possible to identify individual cats, establish their gender, and determine the gender ratios of cats in specific areas.

Like its community-based conservation efforts, SLC’s research projects also engage the active participation of local villagers.  In Pakistan, Nepal, and India, local residents are employed to monitor snow leopards and other wildlife using Cyber Tracker software with hand-held computers.  SLC’s community partners integrate these high-tech tools with their traditional knowledge, renewing a heritage of natural resource management in the Himalaya.