A Community-Based Approach to Mitigating Livestock Depredation by Snow Leopards

Livestock depredation by the endangered snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is an increasingly contentious issue in Himalayan villages, especially in or near protected areas. Mass attacks in which as many as 100 sheep and goats are killed in a single incident inevitably result in retaliation by local villagers. This article describes a community-based conservation initiative to address this problem in Hemis National Park, India. Human–wildlife conflict is alleviated by predator-proofing villagers’ nighttime livestock pens and by enhancing household incomes in environmentally sensitive and culturally compatible ways. The authors have found that the highly participatory strategy described here (Appreciative Participatory Planning and Action—APPA) leads to a sense of project ownership by local stakeholders, communal empowerment, self-reliance, and willingness to co-exist with snow leopards. The most significant conservation outcome of this process is the protection from retaliatory poaching of up to five snow leopards for every village’s livestock pens that are made predator-proof.