The snow leopard ( Panthera uncia ), a flagship species of global alpine ecosystems, plays a vital role in maintaining regional ecological balance. This study developed a spatial conservation assessment framework for snow leopards that incorporates predator-prey coupling relationships, combining the MaxEnt and Omniscape.jl models to quantitatively analyze habitat suitability, key corridors, and human-snow leopard conflict risk. The results show that the potential habitat areas of snow leopards, blue sheep ( Pseudois nayaur ), and Siberian ibex ( Capra sibirica ) are 2.79 × 10 6 km 2 , 1.93 × 10 6 km 2 , and 3.22 × 10 6 km 2 , respectively. The total area of key snow leopard corridors is 2.7 × 10 5 km 2 , with core synergistic corridors (CSC, 29.4%) distributed in the Tianshan and Kunlun Mountains and core overlapping corridors (COC, 56.5%) concentrated in the Himalayas and Mongolia. Key functional corridors generally exhibit greater topographic ruggedness, vegetation cover, and snow cover. Conflict risk analysis identified high-risk hotspots in Ningxia, Nei Mongolia, Gansu, and Qinghai (China); and Övörkhangai Province (Mongolia). This study emphasizes that incorporating prey resources into snow leopard conservation can enhance ecological realism. Protection of key corridors should prioritize improving ground cover concealment, while conflict hotspots require strengthened transboundary cooperation and increased prey abundance to fundamentally reduce human-snow leopard conflicts. • Developed a predator-prey coupled framework for snow leopard spatial conservation. • Key snow leopard corridors cover a total area of 2.7 × 10 5 km 2 . • Snow leopard corridors are closely linked to surface concealment. • 27.0% of snow leopard habitat faces conflict risk with human habitats.
Yu et al. (Mon,) studied this question.