The guide includes descriptive information about the snow leopard, the lynx and the Pallas’s cat and is based on years of research conducted as part of many projects launched to study rare and endangered wild cats, such as Following the Snow Leopard’s Tracks and Wild Cats of South Siberia.

The field guide provides information about the morphological characteristics of cat species, their traces, prey and lairs, as well as index cards for logging animal sightings and tracks plus a ruler for analysing their paw prints.

Researchers from the Khakassky, Sayano-Shushensky and Daursky nature reserves are already using the guide during field expeditions to the protected areas and winter surveys of the animals’ migration patterns. Government inspectors of the protected areas refer to this field guide when conducting nature protection inspections.

The field guide was printed by the Khakassian branch of the Russian Geographical Society together with researchers of the Khakassky, Sayano-Shushensky and Daursky nature reserves and with assistance from the Strana Zapovednaya (Preserved Realm) Foundation.