The Snow Leopard: Peter Matthiessen

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Results indicate that roughly 30% of their habitat in the Himalaya may be lost because of this shifting treeline. One of them was Schaller, who took the first recorded photograph of a snow leopard, in Chitral Gol, Pakistan, in 1970.

Through these European breeding programmes the species coordinator uses data from the studbook to manage the non-wild (Ex-situ) populations. Reproductive success is higher in areas where females can find secluded denning as well as a large abundance and availability of prey nearby. The zoologist George Schaller, whom Matthiessen accompanied to the Himalayas, says that, forty years after “The Snow Leopard” ’s publication, the animal has grown only slightly less mysterious. It was an arduous, sometimes dangerous, physical endeavour: exertion, blisters, blizzards, endless negotiations with sherpas, quaking cold. Their lives are also threatened by poaching, driven by illegal trades in pelts and in body parts used for traditional Chinese medicine.His book dramatises how it is more likely intuited while you “trudge and pant and climb and slip and climb and gasp” getting up there. All his life, Alex notes, people have asked him – “sometimes breathlessly” – what it was like to have Peter Matthiessen as a father. This means their ears won’t be sticking up, so won’t give their position away whilst they are peeking over rocks, stalking prey. However, interspecific killing between leopards ( Panthera pardus) and snow leopards can occur when competition for resources between these sympatric carnivores increases.

Schaller's original objective was to compare the mating habits of the Himalayan blue sheep (the bharal) with those of the common sheep of the USA, while for Matthiessen the trip was more of a spiritual exploration. In this tale the snow leopard protector seeks out a young girl to train in the wisdom of guardianship.It won the National Book Award in 1978, when I was first teaching, and I was not yet ready to read it.