How Spiti’s women are at the heart of conserving the snow leopard

When Lobzang Yangchen first joined a wildlife monitoring team in her village two years ago, she had never touched a computer. Today, the 31-year-old mother of two daughters leads an 11-member women’s team from Kibber that has become central to Himachal Pradesh’s efforts to conserve the snow leopard.

Born in Losar, a village about 50km from Kibber, Lobzang remembers hearing stories as a child about snow leopards attacking goats and sheep. “I never saw one,” she recalled. “We only heard that they came at night, silently, and that herders had to guard their livestock.”

After she married and moved to Kibber, those stories became real. “Here, losing four or five goats in one night was common,” she said. “People saw snow leopards as a problem, not something to protect.”

When the Himachal Pradesh Forest Department and the Nature Conservation Foundation began involving local people in snow leopard surveys, Lobzang decided to volunteer. “People asked why we should protect them if they cause harm,” she said. “Now they understand that our goats are food for them, and they are also living beings who need food.”

The Kibber women’s team worked on every stage of the state’s snow leopard assessment – from setting up camera traps to processing data....

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