Kyrgyzstan has officially designated a massive stretch of its high-altitude landscape as a protected corridor for snow leopards and other mountain wildlife.
The Ak Ilbirs ecological corridor, formalized in 2025, spans nearly 800,000 hectares (2 million acres) and was designed with the future climate in mind, Mongabay’s Liz Kimbrough reports.
The corridor connects several existing protected areas in the country, as well as pastureland, forest and other ecosystems across 14 rural municipalities to ensure wildlife, including snow leopards (Panthera uncia), can move freely as climate change shifts their habitats.
The project was spearheaded by the Central Asian Mammals and Climate Adaptation (CAMCA) initiative, led by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) in collaboration with the Kyrgyz government, Humboldt University of Berlin, and local conservation groups including CAMP Alatoo and Ilbirs Foundation.
Murat Zhumashev, director of CAMP Alatoo, said that while the Ak Ilbirs corridor carries official protected area status, it functions differently from most.
“The ecological corridor in Kyrgyzstan is based on a regulatory rather than a restrictive approach,” Zhumashev and his colleague Salamat Zhumabaeva told Mongabay by email. “It builds on existing environmental legislation, but unlike strictly protected areas, it does not involve land withdrawal or the introduction of strict prohibitions.”
To design the corridor, scientists at Humboldt University “applied a combination of expert local knowledge, climate predictions and technical expertise to build the narratives for the future scenarios,” Julieta Decarre from Humboldt told Mongabay by email.
Under future climate emissions scenarios, more than 60% of suitable habitat for snow leopards and their primary prey, such as argali sheep (Ovis ammon) and Asiatic ibex (Capra sibirica), fall within the designed corridor, she said.
Snow leopards are a sign of a healthy mountain ecosystem. As top predators, they depend on thriving prey populations, which in turn need a healthy mountain ecosystem. However, with shrinking glaciers, unpredictable rainfall and deteriorating pastures, herders are moving higher into the mountains increasing competition between livestock and wild ungulates.
This will “affect the well-being of snow leopards,” Zairbek Kubanychbekov, director of the Ilbirs Foundation, told Mongabay by email.
To mitigate these pressures, there are specific management rules within the corridor, such as no-grazing zones and seasonal grazing bans like during early spring. Herders must also leave at least 40% of vegetation cover as forage for wild animals.
“Projects like this are good for hope, because you can see changes at the policy level and changes in people’s mindsets on the ground,” Maarten Hofman, associate program management officer at UNEP, told Mongabay in a video call.
To reduce financial dependence on large livestock herds, the CAMCA project is training local communities in alternative livelihoods such as beekeeping, orchard cultivation and ecotourism.
Read the full story by Liz Kimbrough here.
Banner image of an Asiatic ibex (Capra sibirica) in the mountains, a key prey of snow leopards. Camera trap photo courtesy of Ilbirs Foundation/UNEP.
This story first appeared on Mongabay
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