Denis Malikov, Director of the Sailugem National Park, during a meeting of the experts section on the conservation and restoration of the snow leopard of the working group on the conservation and restoration of certain rare and endangered wildlife in Russia, reported that 50 percent of snow leopards in Russia live in the Altai Republic. The event was chaired by the Head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Environmental Management, the head of the Experts section Amirkhana Amirkhanova.
As part of his report, Denis Malikov summed up the results of snow leopard records in the Altai Republic in 2023.
"During the work, the scientific staff of the Sailugem National Park covered 280 kilometers of high-altitude routes, 116 cameras of photo and video recording were checked, 57,969 frames were analyzed, 538 of them with a snow leopard," the head of the Sailugem National Park said.
According to research, 43-44 individuals of the snow leopard live in the Altai Republic – this is more than 50 percent of the total number of species in the country. In addition, there are six individuals living in the Republic of Buryatia, 25 individuals in the Republic of Tyva, and nine individuals in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
During the meeting, Senior Researcher of the Altai Nature Reserve (Altai Republic) Sergey Spitsyn touched upon the issue of the relevance of the creation of protected areas of federal significance on the Chikhachev Ridge.
According to the strategy of conservation of the snow leopard in Russia, the Chikhachev Ridge is one of the most important territories for the survival of the species in the country. According to experts of the Altai Nature Reserve, an effective measure for the conservation of the snow leopard can be the creation of a reserve of federal significance in this area. This will make it possible to take under protection the key groups of the snow leopard and argali (one of the main feeding facilities of the snow leopard) on the Chikhachev Ridge.
In addition, it will provide an ecological corridor for the Altai and Sayan snow leopard habitats on the periphery of the range with the main population core in Mongolia.
The proximity of the reserve with the Altai Nature Reserve (Altai Republic), the Ubsunur Basin Nature Reserve (Republic of Tyva), as well as with the cluster "B" of the Siilkhem National Park (Mongolia) will actually create a single cross-border protected area. This will make it possible to solve the issues of international cooperation on the protection and study of populations of rare species even more effectively.
The topic of cross-border cooperation was continued by the President of the Fund for the Conservation of the Snow Leopard of Mongolia Bariushaa Munkhtsog. As part of his visit to Russia, the expert visited the Snow Leopard Recovery, Reintroduction and Rehabilitation Center (Roev Ruchey), which is preparing to open in Krasnoyarsk, noting its high quality. The animals born at the Center will be trained for life in their natural habitat and subsequently released into nature in order to replenish the wild population of the snow leopard in Russia. It is planned that the Center's parent stock will include a male and a female snow leopard, which Mongolia will transfer to the Russian Federation. The number of snow leopards in Mongolia today is more than one thousand individuals.
Director of the Sayano-Shushensky Nature Reserve (Krasnoyarsk Territory) Gennady Kiselyov reported on the results of the world's first international snow leopard translocation project. The male and female snow leopard brought from Tajikistan in 2018-2019 successfully adapted to a new place, the female settled on the territory of the Sayano-Shushensky Reserve and regularly brings kittens, which are marked on photo and video traps.
The director of the reserve "Ubsunur basin" (Republic of Tyva) Balban-ool Diinmei Kaadyr-oolovich noted during his report that today the snow leopard is distributed almost throughout the republic, except for the plains. As part of the work on the conservation of the species, the staff of the reserve are doing a lot of work with the local population. So, if a snow leopard causes damage by killing livestock, the owners of the farm are entitled to compensation.
The snow leopard is one of the 13 priority wildlife objects of the federal project "Conservation of biodiversity and development of ecotourism", which is part of the national project "Ecology". Coordination of the implementation of the federal project is entrusted to the Roszapovedcenter of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia.
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