President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov and Russian Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Dmitry Kobylkin discussed the prospects for opening a snow leopard reintroduction centre in Tatarstan.

The president of Tatarstan submitted a plan for building such a centre in the republic with the support of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Federal Service for the Supervision of Natural Resources and Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University.

The main goals of the new centre are to restore and increase the snow leopard population by breeding and raising cubs at inter-regional centres, to eliminate factors that reduce the number of animals, and to minimise the loss and destruction of the snow leopard’s natural habitat.