In search of the elusive snow leopard

Li Yuhan shows how to use the camera traps. [Photo/Shanshui Conservation Center]

Sometimes the road was so narrow that the cars barely missed scraping the mountainside. At other times it was as if we were floating high in the air above the swiftly flowing yellow water of the Zhaqu River. Stones and rocks that tumbled down the mountains scattered over the road. The view was amazing, but I was so terrified that several times at the local holy mountain on whose top sat a naturally formed Buddha statue I prayed that we would not die, either by plunging over a cliff, or being crushed by falling boulders.

In fact we had entered the mountains the day before, but we arrived too late. Halfway in we came across the remains of a half-eaten domestic yak beside the road, which one of our party reckoned had fallen prey to a snow leopard. Some members of the team had gone deeper into the mountains and told of seeing white-lipped deer and foxes, so we were here again to try our luck.

Angsai town, with its well-preserved natural environment, is home to many wild animals, such as leopards, brown bears, white-lipped deer, blue sheep, argali, white-eared pheasants and the most famous of them all, the snow leopard.

But before Angsai was designated a pilot town in China's national park system in June last year, nobody knew how many kinds of wild animals, especially big carnivores, lived in the area.