Research overview: snow leopards land-sharing with pastoralists

Across most of their range, snow leopards share the landscape with pastoralist communities and their livestock rather than occupying pristine wilderness, and this overview examines what movement research reveals about this coexistence. GPS telemetry shows that snow leopards routinely use areas grazed by domestic herds, that their movements overlap with human activity, and that strictly protected, people-free reserves cover only a fraction of the habitat the species needs. This evidence underpins a land-sharing conservation model, in which snow leopards persist alongside herders through conflict mitigation, livestock protection, and community engagement rather than exclusion of people. The overview discusses how understanding where and when cats move relative to settlements and grazing is essential for reducing depredation and retaliatory killing. Movement data make the case that coexistence, not separation, is central to snow leopard survival.