6689 sq km Protected Area for
 Snow Leopards is Approved !

Snow Leopard, Mongolia. Photo by Fritz Pölking.

Courtesy of Snow Leopard Trust.

From the Snow Leopard Trust blog:
 

As the Snow Leopard Trust reported last year, important snow leopard habitat in the Tost Mountains of southern Mongolia is covered with licenses for mining exploration. The Snow Leopard Trust and the members of the local communities were concerned about what further mining action could do to this land and its wildlife if the licenses were allowed to move into the extraction phase.

For the past 10 months the Snow Leopard Trust has worked hard and focused on helping the people of Tost develop and submit a petition and campaign that would register their land as a community-managed protected area. Twice, the application was rejected.

Find out about all the efforts Snow Leopard Trust has put into this issue over the past 10 months.

Now the Snow Leopard Trust is happy to announce that on Tuesday, December 7th 2010, after our third attempt, received notice that the Ministry of Geology and Mineral Resources approved an official ‘Local Protected Area’ for the Tost community!

Read more...

Snow Leopard habitat, western Mongolia, at the Mongolian-

Russian-Chinese border triangle. July 2006. Photo M. Grimm