Syracuse.com - SUNY ESF profs and students have role in capturing rare Siberian cat on film

[HuntingNY-News]

Cameras, equipped with motion sensors, captured photos of two elusive snow leopards on a ridge in the Altai Mountains along the Russia-Mongolia border.

Photo courtesy of Sergei Spitsyn (Arkhar/Altaisky State Biosphere Reserve)A snow leopard

SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forest researchers recently set up trail cameras on a remote mountain range in Siberia.

The cameras, equipped with motion sensors, captured photos of two elusive snow leopards on a ridge in the Altai Mountains along the Russia-Mongolia border.

“To get a picture is really a big deal,” said James P. Gibbs, an ESF conservation biologist, who has been involved in several research projects involving snow leopards in the area for more than three years. “We’ve seen scrapes, scratch marks on trees. But a picture is irrefutable,” he added.

The photos were taken between Oct. 26 and 30 at an altitude of about 12,000 feet in elevation at the Chikhachyova Ridge in the Altai Republic. Gibbs said the animals are probably part of a larger population that extends into Mongolia.

Ten cameras were installed in the area during an expedition this past summer. Gibbs made the trip with Jacqueline Frair, an ESF wildlife ecologist, and three SUNY ESF graduate students: James Arrigoni, Meredith Atwood and Elizabeth Hunter.

The main reason for the trip was to survey the population of Argali sheep, the world’s largest wild sheep species, which is threatened by hunting and habitat loss. But the researchers did double duty, searching at the same time for evidence of snow leopards.

Gibbs said there’s only an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 snow leopards left in an expansive area that stretches from Afghanistan to Russia, and eastward to the China/Nepal area The animal’s population is threatened by poachers who hunt the animals for their distinctive spotted coats.

Adult snow leopards range in size from 50 to 100 pounds. “They’re sort of like a small but very thickly furred cougar,” he said.

Gibbs said ESF supplied the high-tech cameras through a $20,000 grant from Panthera, a conservation organization that focuses on saving wild cats. In addition to the snow leopards, the cameras took pictures of the rarely seen Pallas cat, also called a manul — another thick-furred, feline about the size of a domestic cat.

The cameras will continue to track snow leopard movements on the ridge throughout the winter, he said.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog