Snow leopard – human conflict as a conservation challenge―a review

Human conflict with large carnivores continues to be a great conservation challenge, and conflict with snow leopards ( Panthera uncia ) has been studied to understand causes and propose mitigation schemes. While the nature of snow leopard-human conflict is similar in most cases, reported studies have been case-and area-specific with mitigation strategies not necessarily based on a synthesis of relevant literature. We reviewed snow leopard literature published from 1970-2020 to identify the main drivers of human-snow leopard conflict (HSLC) and describe conservation and conflict mitigation strategies commonly employed. Based on 47 relevant peer-reviewed articles, review papers, book chapters, project reports, and other grey literature, we identified four major conflict domains: livestock management-related, socio-economic


Introduction
Coexistence of humans and large carnivores has been among the greatest conservation challenges (Lamb et al. 2020). Human-snow leopard (Panthera uncia) conflict (HSLC) is a continuing conservation challenge across the snow leopard's global range (Young et al. 2010, and includes ecological, socio-economic, cultural, and commercial dimensions. The ecological aspects of HSLC include abundance and distribution of wild prey species, snow leopard abundance and distribution, its rugged and remote habitat, and the presence of sympatric large carnivores (Robinson and Weckworth 2016). Among the socio-economic and cultural aspects of HSLC are excessive numbers of livestock, livestock predation with devastating economic loss for people, socio-economically and culturally diverse communities with different poverty levels, and negative perception of local communities about carnivore species (Moheb et al. 2012, Kansky et al. 2014). In addition, some wildlife management programs might also have roots in HSLC in some parts of snow leopard range (Hussain 2003, Kachel et al. 2017, Rashid et al. 2020; for example Hussain (2003) reported that snow leopard and other predator species in Northern Pakistan where trophy hunting happens for ibex are killed not only to protect livestock but also to protect the wild ungulate subject to trophy hunting.
Here we aim to describe human-snow leopard conflict circumstances at the range-wide level, conflict assessment methods, and provide recommendations on best mitigation strategies based on documented scientific research across the species range. We assess conflicts across snow leopard range and compile the best conflict mitigation practices reported in snow leopardhuman conflict literature. We review predation and conflict related articles published since the 1970s that have reported snow leopard and other sympatric predators' conflicts with livestock. Our main focus was to understand the circumstances of livestock predation, the retaliatory killing of predator species, and conflict mitigation schemes applied throughout the entire range of snow leopards.

Methods
We assessed snow leopard and human conflict literature, published in English from 1970-2020, by retrieving peer-reviewed snow leopard conflict-related articles online using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting of Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis) review method (Moher et al. 2009). We used the Web of Science and Google Scholar databases, and also reference-mined where we searched for snow leopard conflict-related article titles within relevant scientific publications (Fig. 1). We used the word combinations of either "snow leopard" or "Panthera uncia" with any of the following keywords or phrases: human-wildlife conflict; livestock predation; depredation; coexistence; attack; killing; wildlife hunting; predator-prey relationship; food habit; retaliatory killing; conflict management; livestock insurance; poaching; compensation; prey preference; attitude; conflict hotspots; and surplus killings. We also added, one by one, the name of all 12 range countries with the combination of the aforementioned key words to obtain any HSLC related peer-reviewed journal articles for all the snow leopard range states.
We screened relevant articles and extracted information on: 1) data collection methods, 2) study region, 3) livestock, wild prey, and predator densities, 4) predation rates of snow leopards and other predators, 5) contributing factors to livestock predation, 6) suggested conflict mitigation schemes and best practices, and 7) whether or not any of the suggested mitigation schemes were tested for their efficacy. We tested the overall snow leopard contribution to livestock predation versus wolf and lynx predation using t-tests. While compiling the literature, we identified four major conflict factor domains: livestock management related factors, ecological factors, socio-economic or human related factors, and policy related factors. A variety of factors were identified within each domain.
The data collection methods used in the reviewed articles were coded as: 1. Social science method that includes interview, questionnaire, and focused group discussion data.
2. Ecological method that includes camera trap data, diet study, and scat analysis.
3. Compensatory and supportive record methods that include the compensation records, insurance programs and other project/status reports.
4. Combined methods that include articles that have used a combination of the above-mentioned data collection methods, and 5. Review method covering the review data.

Results
We found 35 peer-reviewed journal articles, 4 review papers, 4 book chapters, 2 proceedings, and 2 reports (total = 47) related to snow leopardhuman conflict from eight of the 12 snow leopard range countries (Fig. 2). No peer-reviewed English articles were identified for Kazakhstan,  Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Uzbekistan (Appendix 1).
Data collection methods used by most of the articles were based on social science methods (49%, n = 23) (e.g., questionnaires, interviews, and focus group discussions), followed by research based on scat analysis (9%, n = 4), compensation records kept by the government or other organizations responsible for compensation (6%, n = 3), mix of interview, scat analysis and camera trap surveys (6%, n = 3), camera trap data (2%, n = 1), and GPS telemetry (2%, n = 1). Another 26% (n = 12) consisted of review papers and of project reports that were mainly general overview papers which had not used any data collection methods.
Some articles (17%, n = 8) that appeared in the search considered wild prey density in evaluation of the snow leopard human conflict, while only 15% (n = 7) and 6% (n = 3) used or mentioned livestock and snow leopard densities, respectively. The papers that had included predator and prey (wild or domestic) densities only represented the southern part of the snow leopard range ( Table 1).
The literature compilation resulted in identification of four major conflict factor domains: livestock management related factors (59% of the literature), ecological factors (30%), socio-economic or human related (9%), and policy related (2%). A variety of factors were identified within each domain (Table 3).
A range of conflict mitigation schemes have been reported in snow leopard-human conflict literature (Table 4). Most of the articles either reported or suggested more than one conflict mitigation scheme. Over 21% (n = 10) of the reviewed articles have evaluated the effectiveness of the conflict mitigation schemes by either monitoring over time the amount of livestock loss, monitoring people's action in favor of conservation, people's tolerance towards the predator, and assessments of snow leopard retaliatory killings. Three conflict mitigation Table 2 Percent snow leopard wolf and lynx predation on livestock loss reported in human-snow leopard conflict literature. Snow Leopard Reports | Snow leopard -human conflict as a conservation challenge-a review   Khan et al. 2018, ^ Suryawanshi et al. 2017, 3 Chen et al. 2016, 4 Mishra et al. 2016, * Johansson et al. 2015, 5 Khorozyan et al. 2015, 6 Khan et al. 2014, 7 Maheshwari et al. 2013, 8 Suryawanshi et al. 2013, 9 Moheb et al. 2012, 10 Jackson et al. 2010, 11 Qamar et al. 2010, 12 Sangay & Vernes 2008, 13 Ogra 2008, 14 Namgail et al. 2007, 15 Bagchi & Mishra 2006, 16 Wang & Macdonald 2006, 17 Mishra & Fitzherbert 2004, 18 Jackson et al. 2003, 19 Jackson et al. 2002, 20 Jackson & Wangchuk 2001, 21 Linnell et al. 1999, 22 Mishra 1997, 23 Jackson et al. 1996 (Table 4). Most articles focused on predator-proof corrals (47% of articles), training shepherds and improving livestock guarding (42%), livestock insurance schemes (36%), and compensation for livestock predation (33%). Capacity building and education (25%), improved breeds of (or just use of) guard dogs (25%), and conservation of wild prey (19%) were also prominent in the literature (Appendix 2). and 2) factors that are out of herders' control; e.g., predator density and behavior, wild prey populations, and predator-prey interactions (Mishra et al. 2001, Sangay andVernis 2008). Our review, however, not only focuses on those factors but also identified socio-economic and policy related domains. Rashid et al. (2020) recently published a review of snow leopard-human conflict literature, including the spatio-temporal distribution of research articles, data collection

Discussion
Snow leopard-human conflict factors are numerous and understanding them is key in conflict mitigation and overall conservation of the species as well as community livelihood. Sangay and Vernis (2008) divided the conflict factors into two main categories: 1) herder-induced factors, such as poor herding and livestock management practices, overgrazing, and bigger herd sizes Macdonald 2006, Chetri et al. 2019), methodologies, conflict mitigation factors, and potential options for snow leopard-human conflict management. Our review, not surprisingly, aligns with the findings of Rashid et al. (2020) to a great extent, although we also investigated: 1) livestock, wild prey, and predator densities; 2) percent snow leopard, wolf and lynx predation within the snow leopard's range; and 3) the contributing factors to livestock predation reflected within the literature.
Understanding livestock, wild prey, and predator densities inform management decisions and conflict mitigation strategies, which eventually help predator species conservation as well as community livelihood. The amount of livestock predation can differ by every predator species in multi-predator landscapes (Moheb 2020), which sometimes result in accusing one predator species more than the others while the reality could be otherwise. While predation strategies differ by predators (Alexander et al. 2015), understanding the scope and amount of predation by every predator species is key for identifying speciesspecific solutions.
Our literature review reveals that not many of the conflict mitigation schemes are tested for effectiveness in their respective areas. The snow leopard-human conflict literature, in most cases (>78%), only suggest or report conservation and conflict mitigation measures rather than follow-up studies to test the effectiveness of those measures. Some conflict mitigation measures could be areaand species-specific and testing the effectiveness of such programs will help snow leopard and other carnivores throughout their global range. Rashid et al. (2020) listed compensation programs, livestock management strategies, and community interventions as the most common interventions, and they recommended more focus on "rangeland management" for future HSLC mitigation. However, in terms of intervention practices, we found that predator-proofing of corrals, training shepherds and improving livestock guarding, and livestock insurance were more commonly identified mitigation interventions as compared to compensation programs. Compensation for livestock loss, although widely used as compared to some other conflict-mitigation interventions, has different challenges including an exhaustive case verification process, and in many cases it is unsatisfactory for the impacted herders as the amount of loss is often far higher than the compensation herders receive , Chen et al. 2016, Valentova 2017. Also, compensation for livestock loss frequently struggles with long-term sustainability due to insufficient funding resources.
Snow leopard predation on livestock pose varying amount of economic loss to local communities' dependent on livestock for their livelihood. The average economic loss due to snow leopard predation was up to 23.9%, ranging from 0.6-52% of herders' family per capita income. Supportive and compensatory mitigation measures relate to alleviating the economic hardship for the communities; however, these measures are rarely effective because they rarely match the actual loss, and other restrictions cause communities to remain unhappy with the process. This affects their attitude towards snow leopard and overall conservation programs in their areas. Although less than one third of the reviewed articles (n = 14) have reported the attitudes of local communities towards snow leopard and overall conservation programs, over 57%, 43%, and 7% of the articles reported positive, negative, and neutral attitudes, respectively. It appears that conservation programs are imbalanced (Samelius et al. 2020) in at least two directions. First and most important, conservation biologists usually focus on the ecological outcome of their mitigation efforts as they aim to see the number of the target species increase (Redpath et al. 2015); this is different than the approach that considers both community livelihood and protection of predator species. Second, most snow leopard conservation programs only focus on the snow leopards and do not involve other relatively common and less threatened predators, although they co-occur in the landscape. For example, wolves and lynx share habitats with snow leopards and they also depredate livestock (Din et al. 2017, Namgail et al. 2007, Chen et al. 2016. Predation by sympatric predators also poses a threat to local community livelihoods, which often exacerbates negative attitudes of herder communities towards all predators (Samelius et al. 2020). However, abundance of other predator species may also decrease snow leopard predation on livestock. Din et al. (2019) have associated relatively limited snow leopard predation with the abundance of wolves in the Pamir region; however, they did not provide a reason or hypothesize why this might be the case.
Because protected areas cover only around 10% of snow leopard global range (Rashid et al. 2020), more than just land conservation designation is needed to ensure long-term sustainability of snow leopard populations. Reducing carnivore predation on livestock is essential for successful carnivore conservation (Linnell et al. 1999), and recent scientific literature has suggested a number of conflict mitigation measures. Future management efforts need to take into account the full range of possibilities, and then tailor an approach depending on specific cultural, economic, and ecological circumstances.