Research overview: snow leopard reliance on wild sheep and goats

Snow leopards depend heavily on mountain ungulates, especially blue sheep and ibex, across their range. This overview synthesizes diet studies showing that these wild caprids form the core of the snow leopard's prey, supplemented by marmots, hares, pikas, game birds, and livestock where wild prey is scarce. It reviews how the density of wild sheep and goats sets the carrying capacity for snow leopards, how seasonal movements of prey influence cat ranging, and how depletion of wild ungulates by competition with livestock or hunting forces snow leopards toward domestic animals and conflict. The synthesis links prey ecology directly to snow leopard conservation. For enthusiasts it explains why protecting blue sheep and ibex is inseparable from protecting snow leopards, and why the health of mountain ungulate populations is the foundation on which the cat's survival rests.