Specialists from Altai, Tyva and Buryatia held a meeting ahead of the annual snow leopard count in the Altai-Sayan region. The group leaders and participants of the monitoring discussed the tasks, methods of collecting data and the mechanism of introducing it to the Snow Leopard single database.

The programme makes it possible to identify snow leopards from cross-border The data from motion-sensor cameras used since 2010 are entered into the single system. As of today, forty snow leopards are logged in the database. An entry for each leopard contains pictures from camera traps as well as geolocation data and maps of the habitat. The archive was started last year.

The annual snow leopard count will take place in February-March 2018. In total, there will be seven groups of counters. Russia has about 46–50 snow leopards: 30 in the Altai Republic, eight or nine in Tyva and the others in Buryatia.