Posted on August, 28 2018

Mongolia is considered to harbour second biggest population of snow leopards. However, there is no hard data that show how many of them really are in Mongolian rugged mountains, nor in rest of the 11 countries where snow leopard inhabits, except Bhutan.   
WWF-Mongolia along with the Ministry of Environment and Tourism of Mongolia initiated an large scale survey, “Nationwide Snow Leopard Population Assessment” in April 2017 and bringing governmental and national non-government organizations and researchers from Mongolia, under single goal to assess the snow leopard population size in Mongolia with a technical support from international experts from WWF-International and Snow Leopard Trust, PAWS from GSLEP program, and financial support from WWF-Netherlands and WWF Germany.
“We are using several in depth methodologies, such as occupancy estimates, camera trapping, habitat-modelling and movement survey of snow leopard by collar  to produce sound and scientifically reliable assessment for the snow leopard population size in Mongolia. Survey is covering 480,000 square km (little less than entire Spain) area of Central, Northern, Southern and Western Mongolia for the data collection of occupancy estimates and including a camera trapping survey results from 15 mountains covering 34,000 square km area a territory equal to whole Moldova.” said Gantulga Bayandonoi, WWF-Mongolia species officer.         
Sound assessment of population size is crucial for understanding population trends, threats facing in particular mountain or region, and most importantly for taking proper conservation actions to ensure the survival of the apex predator of the high mountain ecosystem that keeps balance of the ecosystem. Researchers expect to have a first results by first half of 2019.