Living with large carnivores: predation on livestock by the snow leopard

Bagchi and Mishra quantified snow leopard predation on livestock in the Spiti region of the Indian trans-Himalaya, combining diet analysis with herder-reported losses to assess the predator's reliance on domestic animals and the burden on pastoralists. They found snow leopards took a substantial proportion of their diet from livestock where wild prey was scarce, and that losses, though a small fraction of herds, fell heavily on individual households and fuelled antagonism. The study linked depredation intensity to wild-prey availability, implying that restoring natural prey could reduce conflict. It provided early quantitative grounding for the depredation problem central to snow leopard conservation.