By IPS Correspondents
KHICHO-TAL, Nepal, May 12 2004 (IPS)

It’s a blustery morning here at Khicho Lake, four hours’ steep climb from the village of Manang in the Himalayan rain shadow in north-western Nepal. The sky is blue, sunrays bright, and the Himalayan peaks are glistening.

Sixty-six-year-old Kinchom Lama boils some Tibetan tea outside her makeshift camp here at 4,600 metres. Then she scans the pasture slopes for her husband, who left the camp earlier in the morning to see how the 35 yaks he herds were faring on the highland pastures.

Soon, her husband, Rangjung Lama, shows up, swinging a pinewood club that he uses to trudge up the slope. ”They are okay, they are grazing on the pasture on that side of the mountain,” the 61-year-old tells his wife in Manangi, a Tibetan dialect.

Then he squats near the blanket-tented camp as Kinchom prepares to serve him a cup of Tibetan tea.

Almost every evening, Kinchom says, she hears the snow leopards make noises – ‘yauuu’, ‘yauuuu’. She fears that the wild animals can come near their camp, and that the ”wild beasts” may attack their yaks – and the herds of goats and sheep that graze at lower elevations.

”The ‘Pangches’ (snow leopards) live right there,” Kinchom says, pointing at the cliff on the adjacent mountain on the other side of the deep ravine.

Nestled amidst such Himalayan peaks as Chulu and the Annapurnas, Khicho-tal – named after a serene lake where high-altitude swans bob at noon – could be a perfect locale for romantic movies and novels.

But the setting is actually home to increasing conflicts between yak herders and snow leopards.

This is about the altitude where snow leopards stroll, and live. Meantime, from the green pasture below, two herds of blue sheep – the snow leopards’ principal prey – march to higher grounds.

By any chance, if the marauding ‘Pangche’ kills one of the yaks, the herders lose 25,000 to 30,000 Nepali rupees (344 to 412 U.S. dollars). Yet there is no provision for compensation from the government or the Annapurna Conservation Area Project, which is overseen by King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation, an organisation headed by Nepal’s Crown Prince Paras.

”It is not easy to find ‘Pangche’, but if I could find it, I would kill it with my spear,” Lama, the herder in jeans and jacket, says through an interpreter, recalling an incident last year when wild ‘Pangches’ killed four of his yaks.

”(In one of the incidents) two of my yaks went missing. A few days later, I only found the head of one of my yaks in a cave,” he recalls.

For nature conservationists, the snow leopard may be the ‘queen of the Himalaya’ and its existence the powerful indicator of a healthy mountain environment. But for the high-altitude yak herders like Lama, the big snow cat or ‘Pangche’ is enemy number one.

In conferences and seminars in big cities like Kathmandu, experts may talk endlessly about ways of conserving this wildcat in a sustainable way with the locals’ support. But in idyllic Himalayan locales like Khicho Lake, the yak-, goat- and sheepherders are simply enraged by their attacks on their animals.

So, needless to say, they want retribution for the loss of their cattle, their precious property.

Stories of farmers losing precious cattle to wild snow leopards abound across Nyeshang valley in upper Manang and the surrounding villages and yak-sheds across the Annapurna Conservation Area – one of the three such conservation areas on the protected area map of Nepal.

Stories of herders killing ‘Pangches’ in retribution abound, too. For instance, in the remote Nar and Phu village, one account suggests that farmers recently killed a snow leopard that killed livestock.

Yet the authorities do not seem to have any clue on this. Gyamcho Gurung, a local staff of the Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP), has this to say: ”People in Manang are very religious (Buddhists) and they normally refrain from killing or violence.” Yet he concedes: ”Maybe such incidents are not reported and are going unnoticed.”

Spread over an area of 7,629-sq km, the Annapurna Conservation Area – Nepal’s largest conservation area – is one of the three prime habitats of the snow leopard in the country.

Here, their population distribution has been estimated at five to seven per 100 sq km, which is down from 10 to 12 animals per 100-sq km in the upper Dolpo area of the Shey-Phoksundo National Park in the country’s mid-west.

Across Nepal, the snow leopard population has been estimated at between 300 to 500. It potential habitat range covers an area of as much as 30,000-sq km. They have been sighted between the altitude of 3,000 to 5,4000 metres, mainly along the northern frontier bordering the Tibetan Autonomous Region, China.

Dr Prahland Yonzon, a wildlife biologist with the Kathmandu-based Resources Himalaya, however says they have been sighted only in Shey-Phoksundo, Annapurna and Kanchanjungha areas.

Besides their killing by herders, habitat loss due to increasing human population and poaching worry many experts.

Also they have been alarmed by the fact that in recent years, snow leopards’ bones have begun to replace tiger bones for use in traditional and mainly East Asian medicine.

There has been a steep rise in the demand for fur coats and other items made out of snow leopard hides in international markets. ”They are sold in all big cities, including Kathmandu,” says Mangal Man Shakya, chairman of Wildlife Watch Group, a Kathmandu-based non-profit organisation.

”Yet the authorities are turning a blind eye to the problem, and the buying and selling continues,” Shakya adds.

The snow leopard is on the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) ‘Red List’ of protected animals that are considered endangered, the same status as the tiger and panda. It is also protected by the Convention on International Trade in the Endangered species of flora and fauna.

For its part, Nepal’s government is preparing an action plan to conserve snow leopards in the Himalayan highlands. Among others, it talks about improving the living standards of the communities and mobilising them to conserve snow leopards.

Yet poor farmers like the Lamas do not understand conservation. ”The ‘Pangche’ looks beautiful, but that beauty is of no use to us,” Lama laments. ”It only kills our yaks and goats.”

Yonzon of the Resource Himalaya calls for studies on the status and habitat of the snow leopard. ”What is needed is good science, capacity to study, monitor and conserve snow leopards,” says Yonzon, who drafted the snow leopard conservation action plan for the government.

But he concedes that the remoteness and rugged nature of the snow leopard’s habitat area have made research on, and conservation of, the wildcat even more difficult.

Says Yonzon: ”The government should immediately start compensating the affected herders. Like they have done in northern Pakistan, it should mobilise communities for that. That might stop the herders from taking revenge.”

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