Current state of the snow leopard’s range on the Sailyugem ridge of South-Eastern Altai

Saylyugemsky National Park within its modern borders rightly occupies a worthy place in the system of protected areas of the Altai Republic. The park successfully functions solving the problems of preserving rare and endangered species, including flagship ones like snow leopard - Panthera uncia Schreber, 1776, and general biodiversity conservation. We carried out state environmental monitoring "Processing and analysis of data obtained during the inspection of camera traps in Kosh-Agach district" of Saylyugemsky National Park in 2021-2023. The total volume of field material was 2 454 trap-days, 6 624 video recordings from 20 flash cards of camera traps installed in Sailyugem cluster on the Sailyugem Ridge. We reliably established and described a total of 22 passes by individuals of snow leopard of various ages. The snow leopard records has shown 5 passes in the Chagan-Burgazy River basin, the Sarzhemata River head and 9 passes in the Bayan-Chagan River basin, Peak of Journalists. In total, snow leopards made 14 passes and were recorded on 7 camera traps out of 13 (more than 53 %) of the entire network of video cameras. We identified the habitat of two individuals - growing, already large-sized kittens. It is noted high frequency of snow leopard passages. Among 9 records 8 was registred in the Kalanegyr path and 1 on Mount Chernaya (Koldo-oyuk urochische), Sailyugem Ridge. Peak activity was observed from January to April 2023. We assessed food reserve as sufficient, since the numbers of prey item - argali - is high in these places.