The Day of the Grey Ghost

THE SKY WAS GREY, snowfall looming over the Nelang Valley of Gangotri National Park in the Himalayas, as a team of researchers waited to spot a snow leop­ard. It was like another day of waiting in vain. Giving up, they descended from a camera trap station at 4,800 metres, visited frequently by a female snow leopard and her cubs, wrapping up yet another season of field work. Cold, tired and disappointed, as they drove along a frozen river, Ranjana Pal, the main researcher, stared across the mountains thinking “every rock, every shadow seemed to conspire in hiding the very creature we were chasing. They are here. They have probably seen me a hundred times, but I have never seen them.” And then, her heart missed a beat. As they turned round a sharp bend, a cat-like creature ran uphill, startled by the sound of the vehicle. A fleeting glimpse. Then nothing. Ranjana threw open the vehicle door even before it fully came to a halt and saw a pale silhouette disappearing behind a lone juniper bush. There was no pugmark, no movement, but just rocks, silence and a juniper. She, her two field assistants— Vinod and Naresh—and driver Uttam, all locals, waited. Half-an-hour went by. Snowflakes swayed in the wind. Everything else was still. Other members of the ecological research team of the Wildlife Institute of India’s (WII) National Mission for Sus­taining the Himalayan Ecosystem (NMSHE) project were waiting to be picked up from different camera trap points. But Ranjana, her hands numb, feet aching and heart racing, could not leave.

She asked the driver to get the others and stayed behind with her assistants. It began to snow heavily. They took shelter under a rock, not taking their eyes off the juniper. Hours passed. Neither the snow leopard nor Ranjana and her team moved. The silence was shattered by the army trucks and then Uttam shouted, “Snow leopard!”

“It bolted from behind the juniper, streaking uphill towards the cliff with a grace only a snow leopard could possess. Chaos erupted. There were cries of joy. I could barely breathe. For a few glorious seconds, we watched her bound effortlessly across the rocks—then vanish, as if she had never been there at all. I was trembling with joy,” recalls Pithoragarh-born Ranjana, who had done her doctor­ate on snow leopards (Panthera uncia), focusing on understand­ing the influence of climactic and biotic variables on their habitats and potential re­sponse to future climate change. Her team­mates knew what that moment meant for Ranjana, who had been waiting for over six years to catch a glimpse of the snow leopard. While camera trappings gave an insight into their habitat preferences, movement and behaviour, through all of over four years of her PhD since 2015 she could never get to see the subject of her study, which to her was ironic and frustrating. That day— December 10, 2022—the grey ghost had come to life for her. Back at camp, when she opened the database to search for its identity, she realised from the spots that it was the same female captured on camera—once photographed with three cubs.

The first ever scientific estimate of the snow leopard count in India—carried out under the Snow Leopard Population Assess­ment in India (SPAI) programme, for which WII was the national coordinator—released last year estimated that there are 718 in In­dia. They are mostly in the Trans Himalayas and the transition zone between the Greater and Trans Himalayas, generally in habitats over 3,500m. The India-spearheaded Inter­national Big Cat Alliance, which came into force this year, included the snow leopard, the smallest, most elusive and highly endangered of the four big cats found in India. Distinguished from the leopard by its white to grey colour, furry coat and bushy thick tail, which helps it move on rocks on the harsh terrain, larger nostrils to optimise inhalation in the rarefied air at high altitudes, the snow leopard’s habitat is vast.

The government, for the first time went beyond protected zones while planning conservation strategies, says Sathyakumar S, a sci­entist who worked with WII. According to him, while the presence of the snow leopard in India had been chronicled, earlier studies on its numbers in the 1980s were based on sign surveys like pug­marks, information from trekkers and scrapings on the ground, a behavioural trait to mark territory. In 1990, Raghu Chundawat, one of the first in India to do a doctorate on snow leopards, collared one, but it gave him data for just three months as the collar, somehow, fell off. In the mid-1990s, most of the focus was on Project Tiger. Two years after the government launched Project Snow Leopard in 2009, camera traps were used for the first time and the first image of a snow leopard came from Malari in Uttarakhand’s Niti Valley. It was in 2019 that scientists from WII, National Conservation Foundation (NCF) and WWF, in consultation with the environment ministry, states and Union territories, prepared a manual along the lines of other countries under the Population Assessment of World’s Snow Leopards (PAWS), to scientifically detect the numbers of the threatened species in the country. In India, it was called SPAI.

Unlike in the case of tigers, confined to forest areas, the same methodology could not be used in the Trans Himalayas. The area was divided into grids of 10×10 kilometres to check for signs of the extent of the snow leop­ards’ presence. The local community was in­volved in the exercise. The second step was to install cameras, depending on which grids had higher intensity of their presence. “There were captures and recaptures. Like human fingerprints, each one’s rosettes (spots) vary. This is verified through software. Our manu­al was released in 2019 but Covid struck and we could complete the survey only by 2024. It was a mammoth exercise. These are difficult areas,” says Sathyakumar, who has worked at high altitudes for 35 years.

Ladakh is estimated to have the highest number at 477, followed by Uttarakhand at 124, Himachal Pradesh 51, Arunachal Pradesh 36, Sikkim 21, and Jammu & Kash­mir nine. The elusive cat is attracting more attention and luring tourists. Norboo, a La­dakhi snow leopard spotter for the last 15-16 years, says that although it was mostly for­eign tourists, Indians are also getting drawn to the pursuit. This year, says Norboo, he has seen an increase in the number of In­dian tourists. He laughs when asked how many snow leopards he has spotted. “I did not count. Maybe 200-300. People ask me how I spot them and I share all the information,” he says. His family-run high-end lodge, Shan at Uley, which has six rooms, the maximum allowed as per rules, offers a snow leopard tracking experience. In peak season, the 14-year-old lodge is full while at other times the oc­cupancy is 30-50 per cent. The peak season lasts from November to March when chances of sightings are higher. Norboo says the government should make it easier for tourists to get permits.

“At times you have to wait for days, even weeks to spot a snow leopard. We offer expert spotters to take the guests to locations where chances of sighting them are high. It’s all part of the package,” says Norboo’s son Morup Namgail, a wildlife photographer whose closest camera encounter with a snow leop­ard has been 15m. Namgail, who has been watching the snow leop­ard since he was a boy, says the success rate of the cat’s hunt would be just around 20 per cent. Predators in their habitat, they prey mostly on blue sheep, ibex, musk deer, wild boar, and even marmot.

Another high-end resort, the Rumbak Wildlife Lodge, on the periphery of Ladakh’s Hemis National Park, offers wildlife enthusi­asts and adventurers the opportunity to spot the elusive snow leop­ard in its natural habitat. “The thrill of waiting patiently, peering through high-end optics, drinking hot coffee from your flask and then suddenly catching a glimpse of the snow leopard is something that is a textbook adventure filled day. Just bring with you loads of patience,” says its website. Located in Rumbak village, about an hour’s drive from Leh, the lodge has been getting mostly foreign tourists, although in recent times the number of Indian tourists has also increased. “We had a group of 8-10 retired American guests once, and among them the oldest, an 89-year-old woman’s last wish was to see a snow leopard. She did get to see it and she was so happy,” says Odpal George, the visionary behind the lodge.

Besides these, there are home stays which cost less. In the lux­ury resorts, packages for two are in the range of `45,000-55,000 per night. Justifying the tariffs, George says there is 24-hour central heating in all the rooms and the temperatures inside the rooms are maintained at 25 degrees even when outside tem­peratures fall to minus (-)20 degrees. Besides, they hire five to six spotters who have to be paid and, at times, the guests have to be taken out of Rumbak for spotting the snow leopard. He says the government should incentivise infrastructure for home stays.

“It’s difficult to get an exact count, but the future looks good in terms of understanding the snow leopard. Future conser­vation strategies should be landscape level ones, keeping in mind infrastructure development and rising tourism,” says Yash Veer Bhatnagar, country head for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The snow leopards status report, released by Bhupender Yadav, environment, forest and climate change minister, says SPAI covered over 70 per cent of the potential snow leopard range in India, spread over 1,20,000 sq. km of crucial snow leopard habitat across the trans- Himalayan region. Listed as vulnerable on its Red List of Threatened Species by IUCN, the snow leopard faces threats on account of habi­tat loss, poaching, declining prey population, human-wildlife con­flict, and climate change. While its global population is estimated to be around 10,000—across the mountains of Siberia and Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Tibetan Plateau, Mongolia, and India, it is predicted to decline by 10 per cent by 2040. Several countries, including India, prohibited hunting of the snow leopard which, under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, makes it an offence punishable by three-seven years of imprisonment. Sathyakumar says while India has taken steps towards the conservation of the snow leopard, it has to plan for future challenges like the impact of climate change and anthropo­genic pressures, which includes unregulated tourism.

Oblivious of its power to capture the human imagination, beguiled by its mystery, the threat to its numbers and its elusive­ness, the snow leopard is fighting its own battle for prey, thriving on the harsh terrain of the Trans Himalayas.

Himalayan snow leopardLadakhscientific surveySPAItouristsUlley Valleywildlife