Sanjay NEPAL, University of Waterloo, Canada
Caitlin LAIDLAW, University of Waterloo, Canada
The snow leopard is a large carnivore with documented interactions with humans in many Asian countries throughout its range including: China, India, Nepal, Mongolia, and Pakistan (Alexander et al., 2015; Jamwal et al., 2019; Johansson et al., 2015; Oli et al., 1994; Ud Din et al., 2017). Snow leopards range overlap pastoralist communities within and outside protected areas in these countries). Similar to the observed trends in the global human-wildlife interactions literature, snow leopard studies have revealed a mismatch between actual impacts of conflict, such as frequency of livestock depredation, and how communities perceive conflict, such as attitudes towards snow leopards. Such findings emphasize the importance of diverse research approaches to provide a more holistic understanding of these interactions. There is growing recognition that the future of leopard conservation could depend more heavily on how communities perceive the snow leopard than the actual livestock depredation risk. The complexity of snow leopard-human interactions requires a diversity of methods to evaluate these scenarios. However, there is currently no published review that focuses on the investigation of data collection methods on snow leopard human interactions to guide future research. Furthermore, given the complexity of conservation focused on mega fauna and its attraction for international tourism, the broader contexts of conservation dilemma and community conflicts must be reconsidered. In this paper, we argue that the ABC approach, namely, anthropocene, biodiversity, and communties, is perhaps better suited to contemporary research that is holistic and integrative (i.e., social, ecological, economic). The goal of our paper is to examine the different types of methods applied to investigate snow leopard-human interactions, and identifying gaps with the purpose of guiding future research designs keeping the ABC approach in mind.
Mots clés : The ABC approach|snow leopards|conservation conflicts|tourism|Himalaya
A102671SN