CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, Ill., May 20 (UPI) -- A University of Illinois scientist has photographed snow leopards on Mount Everest, where the cats had not been seen since the 1960s.
Som Ale, a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois and former Earthwatch principal investigator, photographed two of the rare cats, which are estimated to number only 300 to 500 in Nepal, and saw tracks of two more. His discovery marked the first confirmed sightings of the elusive cats on the Nepal side of Mount Everest since the 1960s. The Nepal-born biologist was investigating whether a national park established in 1976 to protect snow leopards was having the desired effect.
"Snow leopard sightings are very, very rare," said Ale. "We can easily count them, starting from George Schaller himself, and then Joe Fox and so on." Fox was Ale's former adviser at the University of Tromso, Norway, and former principal investigator of Earthwatch's snow leopard project in Ladakh, India.
Snow leopards are thinly scattered over some of the remotest ranges in the world, including the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan, the Himalayas, and the Sayan Mountains. There are an estimated 4,500 to 7,000 left in the wild.
