Sabin Snow Leopard Grants Program

Sabin Snow Leopard Grants Program is sponsored by Zoo New England. Sabin Snow Leopard Grants Program is a grant from Zoo New England that funds research and conservation efforts protecting snow leopards across their range in Asia.

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Buy Informed. Sabin Snow Leopard Grants Program With the generous support of the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation, Zoo New England is managing the Sabin Snow Leopard Grants Program. Snow leopards remain one of the least studied and most poorly understood of all the big cat species.

Listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, they face a myriad of threats including killing in retribution for livestock depredation, poaching for hides and bones, loss of natural prey, and such emerging threats as resource extraction and infrastructure development.

Both research and conservation efforts are hampered by a lack of funding and, at a range-country level, by a lack of skilled and well-equipped scientists and conservation practitioners. This is true across nearly all of the big cat’s vast two million square kilometer range, which encompasses Asia’s highest and most remote mountain ranges.

The Sabin Snow Leopard Grants Program provides strategic funding to worthy recipients from around the world, especially in the 12 snow leopard range states.

The program supports research and conservation capacity within the snow leopard conservation community and helps to identify gaps in knowledge or needed conservation actions, as well as funding new projects that fill these knowledge gaps or provide missing conservation interventions. The Sabin Snow Leopard Grants Program has been essential in funding critical research and building successful conservation projects based on sound science.

It has contributed to the building of scientific capacity in snow leopard range states in a way that was not otherwise possible. Zoo New England is proud to continue providing this important support to snow leopard conservation so this magnificent big cat can continue to survive and thrive in its high mountain home.

At the start of 2026 we awarded six grants to snow leopard conservationists studying a wide range of topics important to the conservation of this enigmatic and threatened big cat. These include: • Still Wild or Human Altered?

Assessing the Status of Snow Leopard and its Wild Prey after Four Decades in Langu Valley, Mugu, Nepal This project will look to assess the status of snow leopards, their prey, and the communities in the same valley where the first-ever radio collar study of snow leopards occurred (by Dr. Rodney Jackson) 40 years ago.

This new project will be the first time anyone has looked into what has been going on in this area since Dr. Jackson completed his seminal study.

• Building Local Capacity for Ethical Snow Leopard Tourism and Waste Management in Kibber, India In a region with high in-country tourism and related negative impacts, this project will build long-term community led snow leopard conservation by empowering local youth with professional skills in ethical wildlife guiding, data collection, environmental stewardship and responsible tourism management.

• Strengthening Snow Leopard Monitoring and Conservation in Khork Serkh Mountains Range, Western Mongolia This project will engage local herder families in the isolated Gobi-Altai Mountains on community-based carnivore monitoring to document predator presence, livestock depredation, and strengthen wildlife stewardship.

This will empower communities by improving their understanding of snow leopard ecology and reduce the actual impacts on livestock. • Women for Snow Leopards, India This project looks to empower local women in the high Himalayas to monitor and protect snow leopards.

The project will train local women as conservation practitioners, generating high-quality, site-specific camera trap data on snow leopards and their prey, while helping to minimize conflict by changing perceptions around snow leopards and other wildlife.

• Reducing Human-Snow Leopard Conflict through AI-Generated Awareness Communication, Afghanistan This project will develop, with the help of local communities and using artificial intelligence, a short video tutorial to disseminate, in the local language and in an accessible way, recommendations for better protecting livestock in family enclosures.

This initiative will help reduce the risk of retaliation and killing of snow leopards by protecting household livelihoods and, ultimately, strengthen peaceful coexistence between human populations, their livestock, and snow leopards.

• Predators and Pastoralists: Understanding Conflict in Kyrgyzstan’s Snow Leopard Landscapes This initiative will look into snow leopard depredation of livestock in the Kyrgyz Tien Shan Mountains; determine whether livestock loss is in fact caused by snow leopard or other predators (e.g., wolf, lynx, brown bear); assess pastoralist attitudes and coping mechanisms; and offer mitigation strategies to avoid livestock losses and improve coexistence.

Working in often extreme conditions, the conservationists undertaking these difficult projects are leading the effort to help protect and conserve snow leopard populations. Zoo New England is honored and grateful to have the opportunity to support these field researchers as they work to protect this rare and beautiful big cat.

➤ "Guardians of the Peaks: Sabin Snow Leopard Awardees" Zoo New England gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors: