Emerging Threats To Snow Leopards From Energy And Mineral Development

Global trends in population and consumption are driving increased production in the energy and mining sectors. To meet growing demand, development is increasingly moving to new frontiers—many places that contain important biological diversity and have not seen this level of infrastructure development. In this chapter, we (1) discuss potential direct and indirect impacts from mining and energy development to snow leopards (Panthera uncia), (2) identify regions most threatened by habitat conversion and other indirect impacts from energy and mining expansion, (3) discuss mitigation policy as a mechanism to address these impacts, and (4) show how landscape-level conservation planning can guide improvements in implementation of the mitigation hierarchy with a case study in the Mongolian Gobi region.