A Rare Photograph Of a Snow Leopard in Afghanistan

One of the most remote and beautiful regions in the world — Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor — is also home to one of the globe’s rarest creatures, the snow leopard. Researchers for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) recently took some remarkable, close-up photographs of a snow leopard in the Wakhan, using a camera trap that automatically shoots a picture when a creature passes by. Afghanistan is believed to be home to fewer than 200 snow leopards, which live in the Hindu Kush mountains. The Wakhan is a narrow finger of land high in the Hindu Kush in northeastern Afghanistan. WCS researchers are conducting wildlife surveys in the Wakhan with the goal of including it in a network of parks and protected areas that the Afghan government is planning to establish in the war-torn nation. Snow leopards — found in mountainous regions of central and south Asia — are listed as an endangered species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.