World Wildlife Conservation Day: In This Sikkim Village, Leopards & People Coexist Peacefully — What’s Their Secret?

World Wildlife Conservation Day, A Sikkim Village Shows How Trust With Leopards Is Built

This year on World Wildlife Conservation Day, a compelling story from WWF-India highlights how in certain high-altitude villages of Sikkim, humans and leopards — especially Snow Leopard — are managing to live together peacefully. The secret? A combination of community engagement, science-based monitoring and livelihood support that makes coexistence possible. 

Who’s involved: Local communities turned guardians

• Children of local herding families such as Phung Hangma Subba and Song Hangma Limboo grew up traversing these mountains. These days, many from their villages are part of the “guardians” effort — combining traditional mountain-knowledge with scientific training.
• Under the “Guardians of the Mountains” initiative, around 150 volunteers — including community members and forest-department staff — have been trained in camera-trap deployment, GPS tracking, mobile-app data logging, and systematic habitat monitoring.

This approach helps ensure that conservation isn’t something imposed from outside, but owned by those who share their home with wildlife.

What’s the method: Science meets tradition

The programme uses a mix of:

• Extensive camera-trap surveys — Between altitudes of 3,500 m to 6,000 m across 99 locations. Over 200 camera traps collected around 620,000 images, enabling researchers to identify individual snow leopards via their coat patterns (rosettes).
• Rangeland health assessments & biodiversity surveys — Volunteers carry out plant and soil studies, count wild prey (blue sheep, Himalayan marmots, Tibetan gazelle, etc.), and map the state of grazing lands, thereby ensuring that habitat conditions remain favourable for both wildlife and people.
• Continuous monitoring & community feedback — Villagers participate through local institutions (like traditional village bodies called “zomsa”), help collect data, and co-design conservation interventions.

This blended strategy allows humans and leopards to “see” each other without conflict — with both ecological and socio-economic needs taken into account.

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Tangible results & protection of livelihoods

• The programme recorded that Sikkim is home to 21 snow leopards, based on the latest landscape-scale population assessment (part of a larger national survey).
• Recognizing that many negative leopard–human interactions stem from loss of livestock, conservation efforts include reinforced corrals for yaks and cattle — replacing old rock-wall enclosures — and vaccination/sterilisation of stray dogs (which attract predators).
• To reduce the pressure on grazing lands and protect fragile ecosystems, the initiative also helps facilitate eco-tourism, waste-management, and alternative livelihoods for local communities — enabling people to earn without over-exploiting the mountains. 

This shows that protecting wildlife can go hand-in-hand with sustaining human livelihoods — a win-win for both.

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Why this matters — and why it’s a model

• Shows that coexistence is possible: In an era where human-wildlife conflicts are rising globally, this example from Sikkim demonstrates that with empathy, trust, and collective effort, people and apex predators can share landscapes.
• Local people as stewards, not outsiders: Conservation driven by local communities tends to be more sustainable and culturally rooted than top-down enforcement.
• A holistic, system-level approach: Rather than just “protecting animals,” the project looks at habitat health, prey populations, livestock safety, livelihoods, and community well-being — which makes conservation much more resilient.
• A scalable blueprint: Similar mountain- or forest-regions elsewhere (in India or abroad) can adapt this model — especially in areas where large carnivores and humans share fragile ecosystems.
  

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