How activist Bayarjargal Agvaantseren took on Mongolia’s mining industry to save the snow leopards
- Bayarjargal Agvaantseren roused local communities and politicians to prevent mines destroying the magnificent mountain cat’s habitat
- Her work saw the creation of a 1.8-million-acre natural park, home to a population of snow leopards that is the world’s second largest after China
The fight to save snow leopards in Mongolia was never going to be easy – not when it involved taking on mining companies, the backbone of the country’s most powerful industry. It was a long road, one that saw a suspicious death, efforts to convince rural communities that the snow leopard was not their enemy, and the creation of a massive new national park, but Bayarjargal Agvaantseren got there in the end.
The snow leopard is as renowned for its beauty as for its scarcity. It lives at altitudes of more than 10,000 feet, and has evolved to camouflage itself in the snowy landscapes in which it makes its home – but the outlook for the magnificent mountain cat is grim. Habitat fragmentation, poaching, retaliatory killings by farmers who have lost livestock, and the current climate crisis – which could result in a loss of up to 30 per cent of the snow leopard’s habitat in the Himalayas alone – are threatening its survival.
Today, there are fewer than 7,000 snow leopards in the wild; according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which considers it a vulnerable species, the population of mature animals is estimated to be less than 3,400. The IUCN and the global conservation body WWF both believe those numbers are decreasing.
At the beginning we didn’t know what to do, because people were worried about the economy and nobody cared about snow leopards
Mongolia is home to some 1,000 snow leopards, the second-largest population after China – but the country’s booming mining industry is a grave threat to their habitat. Thanks to the efforts of Agvaantseren, however, the government created the 1.8 million-acre Tost Tosonbumba Nature Reserve in April 2016 – the culmination of her seven-year fight against the influential sector.
“We learned in 2009 that the entire Tost Tosonbumba mountain range was being given away to the mining industry, which was quite shocking news to us because South Gobi is the region where 20 per cent to 25 per cent of all Mongolian snow leopards live,” says Agvaantseren, executive director of the Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation and Mongolia Programme Director at the United States-based Snow Leopard Trust. “It was not easy,” recalls the 50-year-old. “In the beginning we didn’t know what to do, because people were worried about the economy and nobody cared about snow leopards.”
At the end of the 2000s, mining was regarded as Mongolia’s economic saviour, and the government started to give prospecting and extraction licences to companies from all over the world. It worked a treat; in 2011, the country’s economy completed a remarkable turnaround, recording the highest GDP growth in the world at an astonishing 17.3 per cent.
