Research overview: snow leopard depredation on livestock

Across the high mountains of Asia, snow leopards prey on domestic sheep, goats, and yaks, creating conflict with herding communities whose livelihoods depend on their animals. This overview surveys research on depredation patterns, including the role of poorly protected corrals where multiple animals can be killed in a single surplus-killing event, and how prey scarcity and livestock husbandry influence attacks. Studies quantify the economic burden on poor pastoralist households and link depredation to retaliatory killing of snow leopards. Researchers evaluate interventions such as predator-proofing corrals, vaccination and herd-health programs that raise tolerance, and livestock-insurance schemes. The overview emphasizes that, as with other big cats, snow leopard survival across vast unprotected rangelands hinges on the tolerance of local people. Reducing the costs of coexistence is therefore as central to conservation as protecting habitat or prey.