Over £30,000 in funding has been awarded to six snow leopard conservationists by the Snow Leopard Conservation Grants Programme. Supported by WFN, the Snow Leopard Trust, led by 2005 Whitley Award winner, Charu Mishra, the Snow Leopard Conservancy and the Snow Leopard Network, this small grants programme is designed to support education, research or conservation projects that meet the needs identified in the Snow Leopard Survival Strategy (SLSS).
Winners are researchers, educators or conservationists from snow leopard range countries, international professionals working closely with, or hosted by, range-country counterparts or post-graduates of any nationality pursuing a higher degree whose proposals are compatible with needs identified in the SLSS document.
The snow leopard conservationists receiving funding in 2013 are:
- Paul Buzzard: Assessing snow leopard status in northwest Yunnan, China
- Jigmet Dadul & Radhika Kothari: Snow Leopard Population Estimation and Conflict Assessment in Eastern Ladakh, India
- Peter Damerell & Justine Shanti Alexander: Complementing an expert led, nationwide evaluation of snow leopard status in China with local assessments of human activities and attitudes in the Qilianshan National Nature Reserve
- Oleg Loginov: Saving Snow Leopards in Kazakhstan
- Ghulam Mohammad: Empowering communities through snow leopard conservation in Basha Valley, Gilgit-Baltistan
- Sergei Spitsyn: Restoring the Argut snow leopard population in Russia’s Altai Republic