Research overview: warming, upslope pastoralism, and snow leopard conflict

Climate warming is enabling herders to graze livestock at higher elevations and later into the season, expanding the overlap between domestic stock and snow leopard core habitat. This overview examines how that encroachment increases depredation conflict, competition between livestock and wild prey for alpine forage, and disturbance of denning areas. It surveys evidence that socioeconomic adaptation to climate, not just direct habitat change, reshapes the human-cat interface in High Asia, and reviews mitigation tools such as predator-proof corrals, insurance schemes, and community conservancies. The synthesis frames snow leopard climate vulnerability as a coupled human-natural system rather than a purely biophysical habitat-shift problem.