What factors best explain attitudes to snow leopards in the Nepal Himalayas?

Abstract

The snow leopard Panthera uncia is a vulnerable wild felid native to mountainous regions of 12 Asian countries. It faces numerous overlapping threats, including killings by herders retaliating against livestock losses, the illegal wildlife trade, loss of prey and habitat, infrastructure, energy and mining developments, and climate change. The species ranges over large territories that often lie outside of protected areas (PA), so coexistence with human populations across its range is key to its persistence. Human attitudes to snow leopards may be an important factor to consider in reducing overlapping threats to this species. However, this nexus has not been widely studied to date. Attitudes to snow leopard conservation, including actors and interventions, may also be a significant aspect of coexistence. These have also received limited empirical attention. This study therefore explored human attitudes to snow leopards and to snow leopard conservation, the motivations for these attitudes and the individual factors that best explained them. Using systematic sampling, a quantitative questionnaire was administered to 705 households at two sites in the Nepal Himalayas: Sagarmatha National Park, with a less decentralised governance model, and Annapurna Conservation Area, with a more decentralised model. Linear regression models were the main form of analysis. Based on these, attitudes to snow leopard conservation emerged as the strongest influence on local attitudes to snow leopards, and vice versa. This was true in both PAs, despite their differing management regimes. Other important explanatory factors included numbers of livestock owned, years of education, household livelihoods and age. Furthermore, a positive intrinsic motivation was the most common reason given by respondents to explain their attitudes to both snow leopards and snow leopard conservation. These findings demonstrate that, in addition to the usual suite of factors that influence attitudes to a species, the way in which its conservation is pursued and perceived also needs consideration. How the snow leopard is conserved may strongly influence its coexistence with local communities.

What Factors Predispose Households in Trans-Himalaya (Central Nepal) to Livestock Predation by Snow Leopards?

“…The total mean attitude scores of respondents close to zero suggests that local people were very weakly accepting the presence of snow leopards, probably due to the high level of livestock losses by snow leopard [ 20 ]. On the one hand, people were accepting the species due to their religious belief (Buddhist) and strict law enforcement for snow leopard conservation, whereas on the other hand they feared livestock loss from the species [ 43 ]. We also observed that herders responded negatively on the presence of snow leopard benefitting the environment.…”

“…Further, their negative response when asked about how would they react to predation by snow leopard confirms the need for conservation education and outreach toward encouraging positive attitudes and environmental stewardship by local people ( Table 5 ). The herders’ positivity in supporting ACAP for snow leopard conservation could be attributed to strict law enforcement, their Buddhist religion and increasingly positive attitudes toward conservation [ 25 , 43 , 44 ]. However, the escalation of conflicts and risk of retaliatory killing of snow leopards cannot be ignored [ 45 ].…”

Multiple factors influence local perceptions of snow leopards and Himalayan wolves in the central Himalayas, Nepal

“…Although information on livestock depredation by snow leopards and wolves exists from Nepal's Himalaya (Aryal et al, 2014;Chetri, Odden & Wegge, 2017;Chetri et al, 2019a;Oli, Taylor & Rogers, 1994;Wegge, Shrestha & Flagstad, 2012;Werhahn et al, 2019), limited information is available regarding variation in local perceptions and tolerance to these species on a large spatial scale (Hanson, Schutgens & Leader-Williams, 2019;Kusi et al, 2019;Oli, Taylor & Rogers, 1994). Hence, in our study, we examined local communities' perceptions of snow leopards and wolves in a large area of~5,000 km 2 where livestock depredation has been a main concern in recent decades.…”

Conservation, risk aversion, and livestock insurance: The case of the snow leopard

“…At the same time, there are some indications that, if threats to their livestock could be put aside, villagers in the areas populated by the snow leopard are otherwise not averse to conservation goals. Hanson et al (2019) used questionnaires administered to 705 households at two sites in the Nepal Himalayas to measure attitudes towards snow leopards and their conservation. Overall, 10.4% of respondents were very positive towards snow leopards, while 50.1% were positive and 19.0% were neutral.…”