Vulnerability of snow leopard habitat to treeline shift in the Himalaya

This landmark assessment modeled how upslope movement of the alpine treeline under warming could shrink the snow leopard's alpine and subalpine habitat across the Himalaya. Using climate envelopes and projected vegetation change, the authors estimated that a substantial fraction of current habitat could be lost as forest encroaches on the cold, open terrain snow leopards depend on. They identified three large refugia likely to persist and emphasized maintaining connectivity between them. The work matters because it reframed snow leopard conservation as a transboundary, climate-adaptation challenge rather than a purely poaching or livestock-conflict problem, and it set priorities for protecting high-elevation strongholds expected to remain suitable through the century.