Leopard sighted in Namche
NAMCHE -- New and important sighting for the snow leopard in Nepal. For the first time, in fact, members of the research group EvK2Cnr/ NAST have sighted a snow leopard near Ngyrse, about 1 km west of Namche Bazaar, at an altitude of 3,372 m (GPS: 27.80276, 86.70476 ).
On May 15, Sudeep Thukari, Technical Support Staff of the HKKH Partnership Project and Lalu Gurung, a collaborator in the research project on the snow leopard research led by EvK2Cnr’s Prof. Lovari, were carrying out a survey on large mammals in the area west of Namche Bazaar. Much to their amazement they sighted and immediately photographed a snow leopard resting near a Himalayan thar carcass, which had likely been killed a couple of days earlier.
This sighting has special significance for Lovari’s project, which has lately met with serious bureaucratic hurdles, primarily due to lack of permits for trapping and radio collaring leopards, an activity officially permitted by Nepali law, but risky to implement without due specific authorization from the Nepalese Minister of Forests and Soil Conservation, Mr. Matrika Prasad Yadav. Radio collaring one or two leopards of the small population resident in the Namche area would help monitor their predation habits, avoid negative impacts on the local communities (predation of livestock) and reduce poaching threats.
Snow Leopards are officially classified as a seriously threatened species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and are part of the species threatened with extinction list of the World Wildlife Fund. EvK2Cnr researchers have been studying them and their interactions with the large mammal community of Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal since 2003 [inserire link al progetto Snow Leopard].
Government officials recently checked the status of research on the snow leopard during the "National Seminar on Snow Leopard", held in Kathmandu on June 6, focussing on: the current state and distribution of the snow leopard in the Nepal Himalayas; updates on actions for preservation of the species; evaluation of snow leopard preservation opportunities in Nepal. During the national meeting, the Minister of Forests stated that research on the preservation of Nepalese wildlife should be carried out only by Nepalese with their own national resources.
The Minister, in fact, is strongly convinced that foreigners could alter the data found. Nonetheless, given the sophistication, experience and expense required to adequately monitor and safeguard this diminishing species, several motions were made in favour of the granting of authorizations for Prof. Lovari’s study, which is carried out in close collaboration with local researchers (WWF-Nepal, Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal Academy of Science and Technology), foreseeing several benefits in terms of training and capacity building for the local scientific community.