Snow Leopard of Nepal: Population, Range, Survey & Conflict

In April 2025 (Baisakh 2082 BS) the Government of Nepal published the country's first comprehensive national estimate of the snow leopard (Panthera uncia), putting the population at 397 individuals with a 95% confidence interval of roughly 331 to 476. The figure carries an average density of about 1.56 snow leopards per 100 square kilometres. The report, titled 'Status of Snow Leopard Population in Nepal, 2025', was led by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) and the Department of Forests and Soil Conservation under the Ministry of Forests and Environment, with the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) and WWF Nepal as key partners.

The result is a milestone because, until now, Nepal never had a robust national count. Earlier figures of 300 to 500 animals were largely guesstimates drawn from sign surveys of tracks, scat and scrapes, plus habitat modelling from studies dating back to the 1980s and 1990s. The 2025 estimate instead rests on modern camera-trap photography and DNA analysis of scat, analysed with spatial capture-recapture statistics.

Researchers stress that 397 is a best estimate rather than a hard headcount, which is why the confidence range matters. Ramchandra Kandel, Director-General of the DNPWC, described the national estimate as a historic step in Nepal's conservation journey. The number gives Nepal a firm baseline against which future population trends, and the impact of conservation spending, can be measured.

The national figure is not the product of one single nationwide census. Instead, it synthesises data gathered between 2015 and 2024 across nine study regions of Nepal's trans-Himalaya, combining separate surveys run by the government, conservation institutions and independent researchers into one coherent estimate. Seven of these regions lie inside protected areas, while two, the Humla-Limi valley and eastern Dolpa, fall outside formal protection.

The seven protected areas surveyed were Api Nampa Conservation Area, Shey Phoksundo National Park, Annapurna Conservation Area, Manaslu Conservation Area, Langtang National Park, Gaurishankar Conservation Area and Kangchenjunga Conservation Area. NTNC led the fieldwork in three of them, Annapurna, Manaslu and Gaurishankar, which it manages. Teams deployed grids of motion-triggered camera traps and collected scat for genetic identification, then applied the Population Assessment of the World's Snow Leopards (PAWS) methodology to convert local densities into a national estimate.

An important caveat is coverage. The assessment spans only about 43% of Nepal's potential snow leopard habitat, so major ranges such as Dhorpatan Hunting Reserve, the Dhaulagiri massif and parts of Api Nampa remain under-surveyed. As those gaps are filled, the national estimate could be revised. Roughly a third of Nepal's suitable snow leopard habitat sits within protected areas, meaning most of the range lies in community-managed and open landscapes where monitoring is harder.

Snow leopards occupy Nepal's high, rugged north along the border with the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, typically between about 3,000 and 5,000 metres, and occasionally higher. Their strongholds run from Kangchenjunga in the far east, through Langtang, Gaurishankar, Manaslu and Annapurna in the centre, to Shey Phoksundo, Dolpa, Humla and Api Nampa in the west. Sagarmatha (Everest) and Makalu Barun national parks also fall within the species' mountain range.

Shey Phoksundo National Park, spread over 3,555 square kilometres across Dolpa and Mugu districts in Karnali Province, is the country's single most important stronghold. An intensive 2019-2022 study using 319 camera traps recorded about 90 snow leopards there at a density of roughly 2.21 per 100 square kilometres, the highest recorded in Nepal. The park also supports thousands of blue sheep, Himalayan tahr and goral that sustain the predators.

Because so much of the range lies outside park boundaries, Nepal manages snow leopards through three large conservation landscapes, eastern, central and western, rather than parks alone. This landscape approach is designed to keep populations connected across valleys and passes, so that individual cats, which range over enormous territories, can move and breed between protected cores.

The snow leopard is found in the mountains of just 12 range countries: Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Global population estimates are wide and uncertain, commonly cited at roughly 4,000 to 6,500 mature individuals, with China alone holding the majority of the habitat.

Against that backdrop, Nepal punches far above its weight. Although the country contains only about 2% of the world's snow leopard habitat, it is estimated to hold close to 10% of the global population, making it the fourth-largest national population among the range states. Ghana Shyam Gurung of WWF Nepal has highlighted this contrast: despite one of the smallest habitat shares, Nepal shelters an outsized number of the cats.

This global framing is a major reason the 2025 estimate drew international attention. It positions Nepal, already celebrated for doubling its wild tiger and rhino numbers, as a similarly significant custodian of the world's high-mountain 'ghost cat'.

The snow leopard's fortunes are tied tightly to its prey. Across Nepal's trans-Himalaya, the blue sheep or bharal (Pseudois nayaur) is the primary wild prey, supplemented by Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus), argali, musk deer, Himalayan goral, serow and smaller animals such as marmots, pikas and hares. A healthy blue sheep population is effectively a precondition for a healthy snow leopard population.

Prey abundance is measurable and locally strong. In Shey Phoksundo National Park, surveys estimated blue sheep numbers in the thousands, with one 2022 assessment putting the park's blue sheep population above 6,000 animals, alongside thousands of tahr and goral. Where prey is plentiful, snow leopard densities tend to be higher, as the Shey Phoksundo figures show.

Climate change is emerging as a threat to this prey base. Warming is shifting alpine vegetation and shrinking suitable pasture at high altitude, which can reduce wild ungulate numbers over time. When wild prey becomes scarce, snow leopards are more likely to turn to domestic livestock, setting up the conflict that dominates conservation work today.

For mountain herders, the snow leopard is both a source of pride and a costly neighbour. The cats prey on yaks, sheep, goats and horses, and a single animal entering an unprotected corral at night can kill many livestock at once, an event known as surplus killing. Reported incidents illustrate the scale: dozens of mountain goats killed in Upper Dolpa in March 2021, around 98 sheep and goats lost in Dolpa in February 2022, and roughly 82 goats killed in a Mustang enclosure in November 2023.

Studies in central Nepal's Narphu valley found that during 2017/18 and 2018/19, nearly three-quarters of surveyed households lost livestock to snow leopards, averaging about two animals per household each year. For a subsistence pastoralist, such losses can wipe out a large share of annual income and fuel resentment, sometimes leading to retaliatory killing of snow leopards through poisoning or snaring.

To break this cycle, communities and conservation partners run predator-proof corrals and community-managed livestock insurance and compensation schemes, where herders and a government or NGO fund share the cost of paying out for verified kills. Results are mixed: where schemes function well, they have coincided with a sharp drop in retaliatory killings, but many suffer from thin coverage, delayed payouts and limited funds. Nepal's newest policy explicitly makes strengthening these mechanisms a priority.

The snow leopard is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, having been down-listed from Endangered in 2017, and is included in Appendix I of CITES, which bans international commercial trade. In Nepal it has been legally protected since the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act, 1973 (2029 BS), which makes killing or trading the animal punishable by several years of imprisonment and a fine.

Nepal's Snow Leopard Conservation Action Plan for 2024-2030, prepared by the DNPWC and the Department of Forests and Soil Conservation with WWF Nepal, sets the strategic direction. Its budget of about USD 14.24 million is a large increase over the roughly USD 3.15 million of the previous plan. Crucially, the priorities have shifted: the largest single share, around 35%, goes to community engagement and human-wildlife conflict mitigation, with about 26% for tackling illegal wildlife trade, marking a move away from a research-heavy focus toward coexistence.

The remaining threats are climate change, habitat fragmentation, declining wild prey, and poaching for pelts and bones. With a credible national baseline of 397 animals now established, Nepal's challenge for the rest of the decade is to keep that number stable or growing while filling the survey gaps in Dhorpatan, Dhaulagiri and other under-studied ranges.