India's First National Snow Leopard Assessment Estimated 718 Animals From Camera Traps at 1,971 Locations and 13,450 Kilometres of Walked Trails Across Six States and Union Territories

India has an estimated 718 snow leopards. The figure comes from the Snow Leopard Population Assessment in India (SPAI), the country’s first nationwide survey of the species, which the Union Environment Minister released on 30 January 2024 at a National Board for Wildlife meeting in New Delhi. The Wildlife Institute of India (WII) coordinated the fieldwork, which ran from 2019 to 2023 with the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) in Mysuru, WWF-India and every snow leopard range state and union territory, according to the Press Information Bureau (PIB).

The ministry calls SPAI the first scientific exercise to report a national snow leopard population. It covered about 120,000 sq km (1.2 lakh) of high Himalayan habitat, which the release puts at more than 70 percent of the species’ potential range in India. The same release says that until recent years the range itself was undefined, because no nationwide assessment had been done.

The count, state by state

The release gives six figures, for fieldwork that PIB dates 2019 to 2023 and Mongabay India dates 2019 to 2022: Ladakh 477, Uttarakhand 124, Himachal Pradesh 51, Arunachal Pradesh 36, Sikkim 21 and Jammu and Kashmir 9. They add up to 718. Ladakh, a union territory, holds roughly two thirds of the total.

Not every region started from the same footing. Mongabay India’s account of the report says Arunachal Pradesh had almost no block-level information before the survey, and that occupancy data now show which blocks have better snow leopard occurrence. WWF-India gave technical inputs for Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, while NCF handled sampling in Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.

The low figure for Jammu and Kashmir sits beside a separate NCF survey in Kishtwar High Altitude National Park, reported by the Snow Leopard Trust on 18 September 2024. Nine camera locations ran for 45 days, produced 175 photographs and identified at least four individual leopards. The Trust describes it as the first photographic evidence of snow leopards in that park, and says researchers needed permits for most areas and a two to three day trek to reach the valleys.

Two steps: walking the signs, then setting the cameras

PIB describes a two-step design that follows national guidelines the ministry issued in 2019. The first step maps where the animal lives. Teams surveyed trails for signs of snow leopards, 13,450 km in all, and recorded occupancy over 93,392 sq km, with presence estimated across 100,841 sq km. According to Mongabay India, observers also filled in questionnaires with people who know the terrain: tour guides, porters, herders, paramilitary personnel and local residents. In Ladakh, Mongabay India reported in July 2025, walkers recorded scats, pugmarks and scrapes.

The second step counts animals, region by region. Camera traps went up at 1,971 locations and ran for about 180,000 trap nights (1.8 lakh), where one trap night is one camera working for one night. They photographed 241 distinct snow leopards.

Neither the ministry’s release nor the Ladakh paper describes genetic analysis of scat. Scat was logged as a sign that an animal had passed.

From 241 photographed animals to 718

The step from 241 to 718 is statistical. Mongabay India reports that spatially explicit capture-recapture modelling was applied to the camera images. The method identifies individual animals, notes where each is photographed again, and uses that pattern of repeat sightings across space to estimate how many animals the cameras missed. It is the same family of methods used for tigers, which our explainer on how India counts its tigers and lions walks through with a small example.

Experts quoted by Mongabay India say the approach builds in data on how far animals move, replacing earlier guesswork. Yash Veer Bhatnagar, the IUCN country representative and a contributor to the report, told the outlet that the occupancy surveys show which blocks have better snow leopard occurrence. Rishi Kumar Sharma of WWF-India, another contributor, said the terrain is part of the reason the exercise was so hard to do.

What the Ladakh study adds

The largest share of the count rests on Ladakh, and a 2025 paper in PLOS ONE lays out that work in detail. Pankaj Raina, an officer of Ladakh’s Department of Wildlife Protection, led it with Ninad Mungi, Yadvendradev Jhala and ten other authors. Their estimate for the territory is 477 snow leopards, with a confidence interval of 380 to 598.

The field effort is documented to the trail. Occupancy surveys covered 351 grid cells over 35,100 sq km and about 6,149 km of trails, and recorded 9,525 signs. Camera traps at 956 locations covered 8,604 sq km and ran for 97,313 trap nights. Mongabay India’s account of the national report also gives 8,604 sq km as the area surveyed in Ladakh. The cameras produced 440 detections good enough for population estimation, and from those the team identified 126 unique adult snow leopards.

To tell one animal from another the team used the pattern on the forehead rather than the flanks. Jhala told Mongabay India that the long coat can ruffle in the wind and distort side patterns. A pattern-recognition program ranked possible matches and trained biologists then checked them in at least two independent rounds, according to the paper.

Density varied sharply across the territory. Hemis National Park recorded 2.073 animals per 100 sq km, which Down To Earth’s report of the study describes as the highest density recorded anywhere. The Changthang sanctuary, which includes the Hanle area described in our piece on the Hanle dark sky reserve, had the lowest densities in the region. For readers planning a trip to the region, our first-visit guide to Ladakh covers the practical side.

The paper’s abstract says 61 percent of Ladakh’s snow leopards live in multi-use areas, meaning land outside protected areas. Raina told Down To Earth, “The high density of snow leopards may be attributed to the cultural values of the Ladakhi people.” He also credited prey availability, remote terrain, low human density and sustained conservation efforts.

Himachal Pradesh, counted twice

Himachal Pradesh’s SPAI figure of 51 matches an estimate NCF and the state Forest Department had published in February 2021. That survey placed 80 camera traps in each of 10 sites, among them Spiti, Pin, Tabo and Hangrang. It photographed 44 individuals and estimated 51 snow leopards, with confidence limits of 34 to 73, according to the Snow Leopard Trust.

The state’s second survey, announced by the Wildlife Wing of the Forest Department with NCF on 17 October 2025, estimated 83 snow leopards, excluding cubs. Camera trapping at six representative sites in about 26,000 sq km of habitat detected 44 unique adults, photographed 262 times. Densities ranged from 0.16 to 0.53 animals per 100 sq km and were highest in the Spiti and Pin valleys, followed by Upper Kinnaur and Tabo, Down To Earth reported. The count of 44 adults is the same as in the first survey, and the estimates are 51 and 83. Our guide to Spiti Valley covers the valley and its cold desert reserve. Many detections in the 2025 survey came from outside protected areas, the statement says. It adds that an indigenous women’s team from Kibber took part in the data analysis.

The habitat, and who protects it

Down To Earth, reporting on the national report, says 34 percent of the 120,000 sq km of habitat is legally protected. The snow leopard has the highest legal status in India, Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and it is one of 24 species supported under the ministry’s Species Recovery Programme, according to a Rajya Sabha reply of 11 December 2025. The same reply says the Cold Desert Biosphere Reserve in Himachal Pradesh, part of UNESCO’s world network of biosphere reserves, secures 7,770 sq km of snow leopard habitat, in addition to the Nanda Devi and Khangchendzonga reserves.

Project Snow Leopard, launched by the Ministry of Environment and Forests on 20 January 2009, is the national framework. It covers Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, and plans for whole mountain areas rather than protected areas alone, with the Wildlife Institute of India and NCF as partners. India’s national priorities document describes the plan as one priority area in each of the five states, with management plans drawn up by forest departments and scientific agencies.

Mongabay India’s account lists the threats the report names: climate change, overgrazing, free-ranging dogs, infrastructure growth, especially in border areas, and retaliatory killing, which it says has declined in Ladakh because of tourism. The report proposes three priority areas: Hemis and Spiti, Nanda Devi and Gangotri, and Khangchendzonga and Tawang.

Reading 718 against the older estimate, and the second cycle

India’s national priorities document, written before SPAI, gave coarse estimates of 400 to 700 snow leopards in about 2 percent of the species’ global range. Mongabay India says the previous estimate of 400 to 700 dates from the 1980s. The earlier number was a rough estimate and SPAI is a structured survey, so the two figures do not show a rise in the population, and the ministry’s release does not present them as a trend.

Experts also pointed to limits in the Ladakh work. Tsewang Namgail, director of the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust, told Mongabay India that the report needed a wider sample and finer habitat stratification for Ladakh, and that it does not explain the east and west differences in the territory in enough detail.

The report recommends a dedicated Snow Leopard Cell at WII in Dehradun, focused on long-term monitoring, and says states and union territories can consider repeating the population estimate every fourth year. Mongabay India gives the estimated cost of the monitoring programme as about 10.08 million dollars. On 6 October 2025, at the Wildlife Week celebrations in Dehradun, the Environment Minister released the Action Plan for the Second Cycle of Snow Leopard Population Estimation. The ministry’s Rajya Sabha reply of 11 December 2025 calls the second cycle SPAI 2.0.