The wonderful snow leopard is about to become extinct (also due to climate change)

    Snow leopard population has shrunk by 20% in the past 16 years due to climate change and poaching

    He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

    Il snow leopard risk theextinction and the fault is, needless to say, climate change. So, even if the Tibetan monks do their best to respect and protect those animals, the picture is not exactly rosy. International Snow Leopard Day is celebrated today.





    International Snow Leopard Day was established in 2014 to raise public awareness of the drama of this now exhausted iconic species. There are many causes, from the deterioration and loss of its habitat to poaching and conflict with local communities.

    Today there are just 4.000 specimens left on the planet, distributed in a small and fragmented range among the high mountains of Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

    Climate change is also playing its part by altering high-altitude ecosystems, the preferred habitat of the snow leopard. On the occasion of the International Day of the snow leopard, the WWF announced that a study by Berkeley University, published in Biological Conservation, estimated that by 2070 only one third of the Tibetan feline's range could resist the effects of global warming. According to the research, a population decline of 82% in Nepal and 85% in Bhutan is expected in the coming decades.

    The snow leopard population, in fact, it has shrunk by 20% over the past 16 years and it is for this reason that in the report "Fragile connections - Snow leopards, people, water and the global climate" released by the WWF, it is hoped that an international action is able to defend Himalayan mountain habitats from climate change, which supply water to hundreds of millions of people across Asia.

    But, if climate change were not stopped, more than a third of the snow leopard habitat would be compromised within the next 50 years. The ever higher temperatures, in fact, can move the tree limits towards higher altitudes and allow humans to cultivate and raise livestock higher and higher, forcing the snow leopards to take refuge in increasingly narrow and fragmented areas.



    The wonderful snow leopard is about to become extinct (also due to climate change)

    “Urgent action is needed to curb climate change and prevent further habitat degradation of the snow leopard, otherwise this extraordinary feline called the 'ghost of the mountains' could disappear, along with the water reserves that are vital to hundreds of millions of people, ”said Rishi Kumar Sharma, Leader of WWF's snow leopard program, which is coordinating the first global strategy ever implemented by the WWF for the conservation of the species.

    Of the snow leopard - posted byIUCN (World Union of Conservation of Nature) in the “Endangered” category of Red List of Threatened Species - only 4 thousand specimens remain. Climate change, which exacerbates threats such as habitat loss or conflicts with communities, could push the species beyond the brink of extinction, as do other species such as polar bears, Adelie penguins, walruses, partridges. white, the Andean flamingos. The wonderful snow leopard is about to become extinct (also due to climate change)

    The wonderful snow leopard is about to become extinct (also due to climate change)

    CLIMATE AND NOT ONLY - The snow leopard is unfortunately also threatened by the poaching, which fuels the illegal trade, and the killings by shepherds "in retaliation for the loss of farmed animals and the decline in natural prey," said Sami Tornikoski, leader of WWF's Global Living Himalayas Initiative.


    Climate and men, in short, a real problem for these and a thousand other animals. Two years ago, the twelve countries of the area where the Snow leopard signed a global agreement in Bishkek, the Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program, to commit to the conservation of the species and a new era of collaboration between governments, international organizations and civil society groups.


    But, if the whole globe does not address climate change in a drastic way, the circle will only close with the disastrous extinction of such rare species.

    Source of reference: Berkeley University, WWF

    READ also:

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