Images of the elusive snow leopard were recently captured in the upper Baltal-Zojila region of Jammu and Kashmir by a team of researchers from Nature Conservation Fund (NCF) in partnership with J&K’s Department of Wildlife Protection.
The big cat was spotted around midnight in early October through camera trapping exercises.
Often referred to as the ‘ghost of the mountains’, spotting a snow leopard is seen as a rare phenomenon. With global numbers estimated at around 4,000, these big cats are sparsely populated across 12 Asian countries and live in extreme mountainous climes.
The Department of Wildlife Protection along with partner NGOs have been working to assess and map the wild cat’s presence in the region, under the Snow Leopard Population Assessment of India (SPAI) project.
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