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Mountain Monarchs



 I photographed 3 years ago at Miru, while entered in a community Thang-pa 
family corral, and killed more than fourty livestock.      
The Snow leopard or the mountain monarch is one of the most beautiful creatures from the cat family which is native to the cold mountainous environment. It is mostly found in the Himalayas. I have a great privilege to know more about its habitats and behavior for the last one and a half-decade as I have been associated with SLT/NCF and have been working with various stakeholders on conservation issues related to the predator. Within this period I have learned enough about the snow leopard and how the Snow Leopard plays a vital role to keep the eco-system in balance. I have had a bit of great luck to come face to face with this beast in the wild where I preferred to observe its characteristic behaviors. I love its solitary walking style on the rocky cliff and ridges which can be mostly observed at dusk and dawn. I last enjoyed watching this majestic creature in 2019 in the first week of February at Ulley. A snow leopard was calling continuously for a very long period on a vantage-point searching for a partner for mating. It was the first such instance where I was experiencing such a behavior. Even when one walks on the snow leopard’s territory, Snow leopards often use scent marks to indicate their presence and common travel routes; which is yet another interesting behavior of the Snow leopard. In many instances, I have seen individual snow leopards scraping the ground with their hind feet and depositing urine or scat. But I had hard luck observing how it leaves its scent mark on overarching rocks on steep cliffs. I always try to observe all these interesting behavioral activities during its solitary walk. Watching a snow leopard hunt its prey is yet another awe-inspiring act that I wish to witness someday. In some instances, a snow leopard killing livestock turns into a conflict scenario after which there is always a threat of retaliatory killing. This creates emotional stress and economic loss to the villagers and loss of wildlife in some cases. As such, it is extremely important to offset such losses via on-ground conservation interventions by partnering with the local communities and enlisting them as torchbearers of wildlife conservation. This model known as community-based conservation has proved to be fruitful and is the only hope to conserve the majestic Mountain monarchs.

Shangdong to Stupa Conversion

Location: Mysuru, Karnataka, India

Comments

  1. Unknown17 January 2020 at 03:36

    Julley Karma le, great work. We hope you will write more of your vast knowledge and on ground experiences.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gyapa Chow17 January 2020 at 06:02

      Thank you so much for the encouragement, but I am unable to recognise you.

      Delete

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