India has an estimated 718 snow leopards in the wild, according to a first-of-its kind, four-year long estimation exercise, the results of which were made public on Tuesday. Known to be an elusive cat and located in mountainous terrain that is hard to access, the numbers for the first time mark a base threshold for the animal’s numbers in India.
The maximum number of cats were estimated to be in Ladakh (477), followed by Uttarakhand (124), Himachal Pradesh (51), Arunachal Pradesh (36), Sikkim (21), and Jammu and Kashmir (9).
The current estimate puts the number of Indian snow leopards from 10-15% of the global population.
