CSG Species Accounts: Snow leopard (Uncia uncia)

Habitat and Distribution
As shown in Figure 1, the snow leopard has an extremely patchy and fragmented distribution, consisting of a mix of long narrow mountain systems and islands of montane habitat scattered throughout a vast region surrounding the Central Asian deserts and plateaus. Although the snow leopard’s range extends over some 2.3 million km² of Central Asia, occupied habitat is estimated at only 1.6 million km², most of which is in Tibet and other parts of China (Fox 1994). Through most of their range, snow leopards are associated with arid and semi-arid shrubland, grassland or steppe (Fox 1989, Jackson 1992). In the mountains of Russia and parts of the Tian Shan they occur in open coniferous forest, but generally avoid dense forest (Heptner and Sludskij 1972, E. Koshkarev pers. comm.).
Snow leopards are generally found at elevations between 3,000-4,500 m, although they occasionally go above 5,500 m in the Himalaya, and at the northern limits of their range can be found between 600-1,500 m (Heptner and Sludskii 1972, Fox 1989, Schaller et al. 1994). Steep terrain broken by cliffs, ridges, gullies and rocky outcrops is preferred (Koshkarev 1984, Mallon 1984a, Jackson and Ahlborn 1984, 1988, Chundawat 1990b, Fox et al. 1991a), although in Mongolia and on the Tibetan Plateau they can be found in relatively flat country (Mallon 1984b, Schaller et al. 1994), especially if ridges offer suitable travel routes, and shrub and rock outcrops provide sufficient cover (Schaller et al. 1988a). In general, snow leopards tend to move, bed and mark along linear topographic features, such as major ridgelines, bluff edges, gullies, and the base or crest of broken cliffs (Jackson and Ahlborn 1988).