IWN Report — Thursday, 15 October 2026
The first scientific survey of snow leopards in Jammu and Kashmir has found at least 21 adults, giving conservationists a count to monitor the cat against in future.
The Snow Leopard Trust, which works in India through its partner the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), reported the result on 14 October. The survey ran from 2022 to 2024 and covered more than 15,000 square kilometres. Dr Munib Khanyari, now the Trust’s Country Director for India, led it with NCF and the Jammu and Kashmir Wildlife Protection Department, using camera traps at carefully chosen sites that were run in 60-day cycles.
According to the Trust, local people shared their knowledge of how snow leopards use the landscape through the seasons, helped the team reach remote ground and acted as hosts and guides. The cameras also recorded Asiatic ibex, musk deer and Himalayan brown bears, records the Trust says add to the picture of the snow leopard’s ecosystem. The findings are meant to help identify key habitat, guide future monitoring and track change over time.
India’s first national snow leopard assessment, released in January 2024 and listed by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), estimated 718 snow leopards across the country. Media coverage of that assessment put the Union Territory’s share at nine animals, according to Kashmir Life. The two figures come from separate exercises.
In September 2024, the Trust published an earlier NCF assessment in Kishtwar High Altitude National Park, which used camera traps at nine locations over 45 days and identified at least four individual snow leopards.
The Trust says the survey also inspired a children’s picture book, The Lost Snow Leopard: A Himalayan Adventure, which follows Burfila, a fictional young snow leopard searching for a territory of his own through landscapes modelled on Jammu and Kashmir. Khanyari created it with wildlife photographer Prasenjeet Yadav, who supplied the mountain photographs, and botanical illustrator Nirupa Rao, who painted the watercolours. All three are National Geographic Explorers, and the book was supported by a National Geographic Society Meridian grant.
Copies were printed in India and are sold through NCF’s online store, with shipping limited to India. The Trust says educator Mehreen Khaleel is helping bring the book to local audiences, and Khanyari plans to use it to engage children in Kashmir.
Sources: Snow Leopard Trust: A Snow Leopard Survey Inspires a Children’s Book · Snow Leopard Trust: Counting Ghosts of the Greater Himalayas · Wildlife Institute of India: Latest Events · Kashmir Life (media report on the January 2024 assessment)