The National Forum on Snow Leopard Conservation took place in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on September 5. This critical summit was convened by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, WCS Mongolia, and our partner, the Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation. The forum brought together over 130 stakeholders, including experts from eleven range countries. The event highlighted both the progress made since the last national gathering in 2008 and the need for better coordination moving forward.
“In the last 4-5 years, there has been a high incidence of snow leopard encounters, livestock conflicts and unregulated tourism in snow leopard landscapes,” explains Purevjav (Pujii) Lkhagvajav, Executive Director of SLCF Mongolia. “This forum was organized because there was an urgent need for organizations working on snow leopard conservation and the Ministry to get together in one room and discuss policy issues.”
Mongolia plays a crucial role in the conservation of this majestic species, which has the second-highest snow leopard population after China.
However, the dangers facing Mongolia’s snow leopards today are dramatically different from those of two decades ago. Linear infrastructure has emerged as a significant new threat, especially as Mongolia proposes an ambitious new project. A railroad network linking the west and east, extending the existing north-south line, is likely to impact a significant portion of the country’s snow leopard habitat. This is cause for alarm, as the 2021 population assessment showed that the cats have high connectivity across the country. Critically, this connectivity could be threatened if new infrastructure projects fail to maintain habitat corridors, a risk magnified by the cats’ low genetic diversity.
In addition to physical threats like infrastructure, the forum tackled a less obvious but equally important challenge: how to coordinate the wealth of snow leopard data now being collected across Mongolia.
Twenty years ago, there was little data on snow leopards. Scientists struggled to understand their basic ecology. Over the last two decades, we have gathered extensive knowledge of snow leopard behavior and ecology, encompassing habitat use and home-range size to diet and denning behavior. This progress has translated into critical conservation action, notably the successful protection of nearly 900,000 hectares of snow leopard habitat in the Mongolian South Gobi.
But success brought a new challenge to snow leopard conservationists: multiple organizations now conduct research and monitoring across the country, with no central coordination. This forum was an opportunity to establish that coordination and articulate a shared vision for the future of the species. Collaborative efforts will be needed to address population assessments, unregulated tourism and other concerns that require input from many stakeholders across the country.
To address these issues, the Snow Leopard National Forum held three breakout group discussions on National Coordination of Monitoring and Research, Community-Based Conservation and Unregulated Tourism, and Linear Infrastructure Impact and Wildlife Corridor. They discussed concrete plans to strengthen existing national monitoring systems and identify crucial corridors for protection.
The forum concluded with the official launch of a national snow leopard conservation network, establishing a unified path forward. This new central network will coordinate all conservation activities and research, ensuring that future actions and policy decisions are driven by the best available scientific data.

Published Date:2025-11-20