Sayano-Shushensky Biosphere Reserve celebrates Snow Leopard Day

Sayano-Shushensky Biosphere Reserve celebrates Snow Leopard Day

25 October 2021

Children from the Muravei (Ant) forestry school and their leader took part in the celebration of Snow Leopard Day at the Sayano-Shushensky Biosphere Reserve. Annually on that day, the reserve staff receive visitors and entertain them with film screenings, workshops, guided tours, theatrical performances and quests.   

 

This year, the visitors are children from the Muravei forestry school of the Shushensky District’s Supplementary Education Centre, for whom a guided tour dedicated to the Sayano-Shushensky Biosphere Reserve and its inhabitants was organised. The focus was on its most mysterious resident, the snow leopard. In addition, the children were shown a video entitled Restoring the Snow Leopard Population in the Sayano-Shushensky Biosphere Reserve, which tells the story of the efforts made to implement the Snow Leopard – A Living Symbol of Western Sayan federal project. After that, the young environmentalists made paper snow leopards from blanks and finally were presented with an album titled The Sayano-Shushensky Biosphere Reserve. Snow Leopard Borderland dedicated to the 45th anniversary of the reserve.

 

International Snow Leopard Day is celebrated on 23 October. It was proclaimed in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in October 2013 at the Global Snow Leopard Forum attended by representatives of Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, the countries where this rare wild cat lives.  The Sayano-Shushensky Biosphere Reserve forms the northern border of the snow leopard‘s range in Russia and the world and by this virtue sees the conservation of this animal as one of its priorities.