Snow Leopard Habitat
Learn About the Snow Leopard Habitat
The snow leopard habitat extends through twelve countries from Afghanistan through Uzbekistan. The big cat lives in Central Asia, in the rugged mountains. The snow leopard's range covers about two million square kilometers, which is roughly the size of Mexico or Greenland. As many as sixty percent of the snow leopard habitat is in China. They used to live in Mongolia, too, but they have disappeared from the area.
A lot of the area where the snow leopard lives is located in areas disputed between different countries, and to a degree, this has helped the cats somewhat. Border areas that are claimed by two countries are often closed to any access by the public, which makes them protected areas, even if they're not called that. It does also make it difficult to study the snow leopards or to get an accurate count.
Snow leopards favor lands that are between three thousand and fifty four hundred meters above sea level. At that elevation, the environment can be forbidding and harsh. The climate is dry and cold, and the slopes of the mountains are sparsely grown over with shrubs and grasses.
The snow leopard habitat includes broken, steep terrain of ravines, rocky outcroppings and cliffs. This area gives them good cover and they can obtain clear views of prey below, and then sneak up on them.
Every individual snow leopard has its own home range. Some of their home ranges overlap somewhat, since snow leopards aren't as aggressively territorial as some other species are. Home ranges can be different sizes, depending on the denseness of the leopard and prey population in an area. In Nepal, and in other areas there is abundant prey, each cat inhabits a home range that may be as small as thirty to sixty square kilometers. In other areas, where prey is not as plentiful, as is the case in Mongolia, snow leopards need larger areas to survive, and their ranges may be larger than one thousand square kilometers.
As a big cat moves around in the snow leopard habitat, they travel along cliff bases and ridgelines, and they choose bedding sites near ridges or cliffs with good views of the area surrounding them.
Researchers have placed radio collars on snow leopards in the wild. They indicate that the cats usually stay in one general area for a few days, and then move to a different part of their home range. Usually they travel valley to valley looking for another prey herd. When they need to, they can travel long distances in one night, and in Mongolia, they sometimes cross twenty-five miles of desert in one trip.
The snow leopard habitat is more in danger now, in most areas, than it has ever been, and it is only through protection that the snow leopard will continue to live.