Snow Leopard
| Kingdom | Animalia |
| Phylum | Chordata |
| Class | Mammalia |
| Order | Carnivora |
| Family | Felidae |
| Subfamily | Pantherinae |
| Genus | Uncia |
| Species | Uncia uncia |
| Species synonyms | Felis uncia
Panthera uncia |
| taxonomy: Smithsonian Institution |
The snow leopard is one of the most famous inhabitants of the Aksu-Djabagly nature reserve. Unfortunately only very few people will have the opportunity to see one in their life. The animal is very shy and can only be found in the deepest part of the reserve. The animal lives above the tree line and is therefore quite inaccesible for most casual tourists. It hunts mostly at night where its diet mainly consists of wild goats, mountain sheeps and largs birds.
The snow leopard is quite large, weighing upto 60 kilograms and has a head and body length of 1 meter. The tail adds an extra 90 centimeters to this. Its coat looks like the pelt of the leopard in Africa, but the color is grey with dark grey or black spots in rosettes.
Total population in the wild in whole Central Asia is estimated between 1000 and 5000. The total number of this animal in the Aksu-Djabagly nature reserve is estimated between 5 and 15 (Vladimir Shakula, 1993). Poaching is one of the major threaths for the animal although poaching inside the reserve is almost banned completely. Just after the collapse of the Soviet Union there have been a few years where poaching and also hunting by foreigners in the reserve took place, but nowadays the Kazakh government has full grip on the protection of wildlife inside the reserve and the population has stabilized, although unfortunately at a lower number than twenty years ago.
In Central Asia as a whole, the situation of the snow leopard
is much worse than in the Aksu-Djabagly nature reserve. The price of a snow leopard pelt can reach many thousands of US dollars on the black market: much more than an average worker earns in one year. That together with local farmers who shoot the animal because it is a danger for their livestock, the number is still declining.
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