Authors: Koju Narayan Prasad, Gosai Kamal Raj, Bashyal Bijay, Byanju Reena, Shrestha Arati, Buzzard Paul, Beisch Willian Bill, Khanal Laxman
Journal: Animals : an open access journal from MDPI
Summary
# Editorial Summary Effective conservation of snow leopards requires detailed knowledge of their dietary flexibility and how they respond to seasonal changes in prey availability across their Himalayan range. Between November 2021 and March 2023, researchers deployed 26 camera traps across the Lapchi Valley in Nepal and analysed 20 snow leopard faecal samples to document prey species presence and dietary composition, recording 1228 predation events across 19 mammalian species. Whilst Himalayan musk deer proved most abundant in the landscape, blue sheep constituted the snow leopard's primary wild prey, with horses preferred amongst livestock, and the diet encompassing 11 species overall—a diversity that varied markedly between seasons (Pianka's index 0.576), reflecting the animals' capacity to switch to smaller prey when larger ungulates became scarce in winter. These findings underscore snow leopards' considerable dietary plasticity as an adaptive strategy to resource scarcity, which has direct implications for livestock management practices in shared rangeland areas and suggests that predator-conflict mitigation must account for seasonal prey availability patterns rather than assuming consistent dietary preferences throughout the year.
Read the full abstract on PubMed
Practical Takeaways
- •This paper does not address equine practice, clinical conditions, or management; it concerns snow leopard conservation ecology in the Nepal Himalayas
- •The incidental finding that horses are preferred livestock prey for snow leopards may be relevant to equine operations in high-altitude Himalayan regions near snow leopard habitat, suggesting need for livestock protection measures
- •No actionable recommendations for working equine professionals can be extracted from this wildlife conservation study
Key Findings
- •Camera trap monitoring of 16 strategically located sites recorded 1228 events of 19 mammalian species over 16 months in the Lapchi Valley
- •Snow leopards consumed 11 prey species with blue sheep as the most consumed wild prey and horses as the preferred livestock (n=20 scat samples analyzed)
- •Pianka's dietary niche overlap index of 0.576 between summer and winter indicates pronounced seasonal dietary variation correlating with prey availability
- •Snow leopards demonstrate dietary plasticity, compensating for scarcity of larger prey in winter by consuming small and meso-mammals