Braving the Cold to Photograph the Elusive Snow Leopard
Amazing Aerial team member Marco Santinelli traveled for days to photograph the snow leopard in India’s remote Spiti Valley. His photos tell a bigger story about the tenuous coexistence between an elusive species and the local community.
Jun 03, 2024
Two snow leopards stride across the snow, Kibber, Himachal Pradesh, India. © Amazing Aerial Agency / MARCO SANTINELLI
By Rebecca Duras
Marco Santinelli had spent hours sitting in -20 degree Celsius weather in the Spiti Valley, a remote region of India’s Himachal Pradesh state, when he finally fulfilled a lifelong dream and spotted the snow leopard. “For years, I had wanted to photograph the snow leopard. It’s considered one of the most [difficult] animals to capture due to its highly elusive nature and the rugged habitats it occupies,” he says. Snow leopard tours in Spiti Valley and Ladakh, another region of India’s Himalayas, are becoming more and more popular as wildlife enthusiasts want to see these rare creatures.
Their shy nature is not the only reason why spotting a snow leopard is a rare occurrence. According to the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust, there are only about 3500-7000 individual snow leopards left in the wild. Experts estimate that there are only about 500 individuals left in the Indian Himalayas. 60% of India’s snow leopards live in Ladakh, while Spiti Valley and the rest of the state of Himachal Pradesh are estimated to have only 73 individuals.
Dr. Tsewang Namgail, the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust’s director, explains in an interview with Amazing Aerial Magazine that threats to the snow leopard vary depending on the region. “If you look at Ladakh, historically and even today, angry farmers killing snow leopards when they get inside livestock pens are the single most important historic threat to snow leopards. To a certain extent that is also true in Spiti, where people are also agropastoralists.” In these remote, impoverished regions, many people make their living from herding livestock, and when a snow leopard enters a pen and kills dozens or more animals, it can ruin a family’s economic future.
Dr. Namgail lists other threats to snow leopards across India, such as poaching and climate change. In Ladakh, the region’s political situation has also indirectly affected the snow leopard. “It was part of Jammu and Kashmir, and now it has become a federally controlled state and a lot of funds are flowing to the regions that sometimes leads to unregulated development.” Ladakh is a border region, and as tensions between India and neighboring China rise, the growing military build-up in the state also threatens the snow leopard’s habitat.
Organizations such as the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust have been working alongside local communities for decades to protect snow leopard populations. Conservation efforts are also helped by the nature of snow leopards, whose elusiveness may frustrate photographers and researchers, but helps show local communities that they can coexist with the animals. “As far as the snow leopard is concerned, there is not a single incident of any lethal attack [against humans] in the world and that makes life easier for us,” Dr. Namgail explains.
Ecotourism: A Pillar of Snow Leopard Conservation
In the face of ever-increasing threats facing snow leopards, tourists like Marco Santinelli actually play a role in helping the animals survive. One of the pillars of the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust’s conservation efforts is actually ecotourism. “This is the organization that pioneered conservation-linked homestays way back in 2003,” Dr. Namgail explains. “The hallmark of the tourism that we promote of course is mostly involving the local community.” The organization helps locals set up homestays. Local youth train as guides and scouts to know how to spot snow leopards in the wild. While several decades ago seeing a snow leopard was nearly unheard of, now, Ladakh and Spiti Valley have cadres of locals who are skilled at finding where snow leopards are roaming and sharing those skills with visitors. “It’s a valued asset, the snow leopard is worth more alive than dead,” Dr. Namgail says.
Wendy Brewer Lama, co-owner of KarmaQuest Ecotourism & Adventure Travel and ecotourism specialist, agrees on the importance of ecotourism in stopping retribution killings and involving the community in conservation. An ecotourism consultant who has been working alongside the Snow Leopard Conservancy since the 1990s and operating tours in this part of India since 2007, she emphasizes the importance of a participatory approach that empowers local communities to design their own future. “The mission was that ecotourism can provide financial and other social incentives for people to conserve the environment that tourists are coming to see,” she tells Amazing Aerial Magazine.
With the Snow Leopard Conservancy (US and IT), Brewer Lama set up a community-led network of homestays in local villages. Villagers earn money from homestays that are operated on a rotational basis, giving equitable opportunities for villagers to distribute the income that in turn motivates conservation. (Brewer-Lama says many use the extra income to send their children to school). KarmaQuest’s carefully planned trips are timed based on decades of research on optimal snow leopard spotting times – generally wintertime –, and coincide with a Buddhist festival at a local monastery for cultural immersion.
The combination of beautiful nature and cultural immersion makes these HImalayan homestays, pioneered in Ladakh but now spreading to other regions including Spiti, a memorable experience for visitors such as Marco. Marco stayed with a local man who rented rooms and was amazed by the hospitality and culture. “The culture is primarily a blend of Tibetan and Indian,” he says, “It was not only rewarding to spend hours and hours in hides every day to capture this magical creature in its daily life (we spent about 8 hours a day still in the snow at around -20 degrees Celsius) but also to explore the beauties this culture had to offer.”
Too Popular for Their Own Good?
However, the popularity of snow leopard tours is harming the snow leopard in Ladakh. Marco himself mentioned that he chose to visit the more remote Spiti Valley because Ladakh had become too touristy. He chose this option even though the trip to Spiti Valley is arduous, stating, “the journey begins with two flights and three days of driving, spending eight hours each day traversing the Himalayan valleys to reach this plateau inhabited only by farmers.”
Both Dr. Namgail and Wendy Brewer Lama express frustration with the overtourism in Ladakh and its effects on the environment. “All these tourist camps are mushrooming everywhere. Because of the lack of management of kitchen waste and leftover waste it leads to a proliferation of dogs at tourist camps, and these dogs then go into surrounding mountains,” explains Dr. Namgail. Stray dogs compete with snow leopards for prey species, and there have even been cases of packs of dogs cornering snow leopards. He lists other effects of overtourism, such as rampant infrastructure development, tourist destruction of rangelands with bikes and off-road vehicles, and poor behavior from tourists such as feeding wild animals.
Brewer Lama mentioned that she has noticed more and more tour operators offering snow leopard tours in Ladakh in recent years. Hemis National Park, the local national park, has started limiting how many people can get a permit at a time. “Toilet management isa problem at high altitude; you can imagine the challenge of digging a toilet pit or compost pit,” she explains, listing general waste, trampling sensitive landscapes, and high levels of noise as frequent problems in popular areas of the national park.
While these problems are not yet affecting the more remote Spiti Valley to the same extent, it is possible that unless the tourism industry in that region makes an effort to focus on sustainable development, that the same problems will arrive in a few years.
Photographing Snow Leopards Responsibly
Photographing snow leopards is still a rewarding experience—but keep in mind that there are plenty of challenges. Most snow leopard expeditions in Ladakh and the Spiti Valley take place in the winter, when snow leopards descend to relatively lower altitudes in search of food. However, these altitudes, usually around 4,000-5,000 meters above sea level, are still taxing on the body. “As for my preparation, I believed I was up to the task, being an avid mountain enthusiast who visits altitudes of 2,000 meters at least once a month and engages in daily running and crossfit.“ Marco explains. “However, that wasn’t enough.”
Even with his extensive preparation, Marco became extremely ill with altitude sickness during the second day of his stay and needed oxygen from an oxygen tank to get back to normal. Altitude sickness can be severe, and even deadly, which is why Wendy Brewer Lama recommends that potential visitors spend a few days in Ladakh’s capital Leh acclimating and to take any altitude sickness symptoms seriously. The bitterly cold weather in the Himalayas during the winter, with temperatures regularly colder than -20 C is another challenge.
“I think tenacity and the ability to tolerate cold are some of the key qualifications,” Wendy Brewer Lama says. Photographers may want to bring additional equipment such as telephoto lenses, tripods, and stabilizers if they want to get good images of snow leopards—but remember that you will have to carry the additional equipment yourself, or hire a porter. “I think a lot of wildlife photographers go to Africa and have that safari experience where you’re in a vehicle, you’re driving up,” she says. “This is very different because the animals might be quite far away and you’re sitting in the snow watching for it for hours.”
For potential visitors, Dr. Namgail has some words of advice—and a plea. “I would appeal to all the photographers to be mindful when they go taking pictures of these elusive creatures…at least maintain some distance.” Snow leopards may be gentle, but they are still wild animals and getting too close is intrusive.
He also emphasizes that photographers should know that beautiful images of snow leopards do not tell the whole story—these are still wild animals, and coexistence with them is often ugly.
“For instance, taking pictures of livestock killed by a snow leopard and that also needs to come out,” he suggests. For local families, a snow leopard killing livestock can be emotionally devastating as many raise their animals for over a decade—not to mention the economic devastation that a family will face if a snow leopard gets into their livestock pen and kills an entire herd. Dr. Namgail warns photographers and those who enjoy beautiful pictures of snow leopards not to be flippant about the real harm that wild animals can cause to locals.
Wendy Brewer Lama also has some final words of advice for photographers. “I would hope that they appreciate the reason they’re able to see it [the snow leopard] at all is all this work that’s gone on since the 1990s,” she says, listing the Snow Leopard Conservancy’s research, extensive conservation work, and long efforts building relationships with local communities. “To be a good visitor is to be responsible for your behavior and to convey the message that these magnificent animals are still under threat.”
For Marco, who tried his best to be a responsible visitor, the trip will always be an experience to remember. “It was undeniably a challenging yet beautiful journey!” he exclaims. Looking at his photos, it’s easy to see why one would brave the cold and altitude for a glimpse of the gorgeous Indian Himalayas–and the gorgeous snow leopard.
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