The Republic of Tatarstan, the Altai Territory and the Republic of Altai have signed agreements on protecting and restoring the snow leopard population. These agreements call for joint efforts in recovering a sustainable snow leopard population, creating a new efficient monitoring system and conducting scientific research.

The Republic of Altai will start catching snow leopards to create a captive reserve population in Tatarstan, since the animals do not live in the wild there. In return, the cubs born in Tatarstan’s snow leopard breeding centre will be released in the Republic of Altai.

In 2017, the President of Tatarstan resolved to create a snow leopard breeding centre to help preserve this endangered animal. The centre will open in the republic’s Laishevo District, in the Saralinsky area of the Volzhsko-Kamsky Biosphere Reserve.

A similar agreement was signed by the Republic of Tatarstan and the Krasnoyarsk Territory earlier in April 2017. This agreement envisages raising snow leopard cubs till they turn eight months at the centre, and then releasing them in the Sayano-Shushensky Biosphere Reserve.