Uttarakhand: Rare sighting of four snow leopards captured on camera

Four snow leopards, including a pair, were reportedly sighted at Uttarakhand’s Nanda Devi National Park and were captured in a camera near the Malari area in Uttarakhand. The sightings were, however, caught in a camera trap between January to March and were discovered lately by the forest officials, director of Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, DK Singh told a media outlet. 

Over10 days ago, the officers checked the camera footages, that they had hidden earlier, and to their astonishment, they came across a rare species of the mountain cat which they later identified as snow leopards, Singh told the media reporters. Everybody around the premises was very elated after learning about these rare sightings, he added.

Another officer, Parag Madhukar Dhakate, at a position of the chief conservator of forests (CCF) western circle Kumaon was quoted as saying that the rare sightings of the snow leopards were caught by the state forest department after the recorders were installed at an altitude of 3,100 meters (10,170 ft) which was usually where these predators could be seen prowling. Hence,  the Crepuscular’ behaviour of these elusive leopards got filmed, he was quoted as saying.

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Nocturnal hunters

Further elaborating, Dhakate said that the snow leopards were nocturnal hunters most agile during the night time who could trace prey at steep rocky broken terrain. They preferred the Blue Sheep for food, as those creatures actively roamed in the night as well, he added, according to media reports. Leopards mostly used cliffs and major ridgelines for rest, and therefore, that’s where the camera traps were set up by the team, he said. India likely has around 516 snow leopards, with the current estimated distribution of 86 in Uttarakhand, 90 in Himachal Pradesh, 285 in Jammu and Kashmir, 13 in Sikkim, and 42 in Arunachal Pradesh, as per the estimates of the Dehradun based Wildlife Institute of India (WII), according to reports.  

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