Snow Leopard Enterprises: Handicraft Income for a No-Poaching Pledge

Snow Leopard Enterprises (SLE) is a livelihoods-for-conservation programme run by the U.S.-based Snow Leopard Trust with its Mongolian partner, the Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation, since 1998. Herder families in snow leopard habitat produce wool handicrafts — felted toys, rugs, clothing — which SLE markets internationally; in exchange, the whole community signs a 'Conservation Contract' committing to stop poaching snow leopards and their wild prey, and to report violations.
According to the Snow Leopard Trust, 27 herder communities are now enrolled in Mongolia, together safeguarding more than 25,000 km² of habitat — about 27% of the country's snow leopard range. The Trust and the independent People Not Poaching platform (a CITES/CMS-linked initiative) both report that retaliatory killing of snow leopards has largely stopped in SLE areas, and that participating families' incomes have risen by roughly 40%. Smaller versions of the model have since been introduced in Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan.
These figures come mainly from the implementing organisation's own reporting rather than an independent population census tied specifically to SLE communities, and Mongolia's overall snow leopard population trend is not isolated from other conservation efforts in the same landscape — so the causal size of SLE's biodiversity effect should be read with some caution even though the livelihood and habitat-coverage figures are well documented.

Read the full analysis: https://snowleopard.org/our-work/conservation-programs/snow-leopard-enterprises/