The second sighting of a snow leopard family was recorded in the Sayano-Shushensky Nature Reserve in 2023. New photos of snow leopards in the wild were captured during an expedition conducted with the participation of representatives of the Khakassian republican department of the Russian Geographical Society (RGS).

The expedition team was conducting the annual autumn visual counting of mountain goats when they noticed from the boat a female with three cubs born last year. The wild cats were about 450-500 metres away. They were calm and the expedition members took out cameras and began to take photos of them, trying to avoid making noise or sudden movements. The snow leopards looked at the motorboat for 10 minutes and then disappeared into the mountains one by one.

Specialists said there is a marking spot with a photo trap not far from the site of the encounter. Sightings of snow leopards are rare in the Sayano-Shushensky Nature Reserve because the large reserve provides a good habitat with significant and diverse food sources. In addition, snow leopards lead secretive lives. However, visual encounters with them have become more frequent in the past few years. This is a consequence of the relocation project, which gave a new lease of life to the population and allowed it to grow.

The last sighting in the reserve occurred on the eve of International Snow Leopard Day observed on October 23.

According to expert estimates, there are no more than 90 snow leopards in Russia now. They are one of the priorities of the federal project to preserve biodiversity and develop ecological tourism that is part of the Ecology national project under the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment of the Russian Federation.

The Sayano-Shushensky Nature Reserve is a historical habitat of snow leopards. Rock paintings (petroglyphs) discovered on the coasts of the Sayan Canion show that snow leopards have lived there since ancient times. The territory of the reserve constitutes the northern border of the Russian and global habitat of snow leopards. Members of the first expeditions there recorded traces of these mysterious wild cats in the late 1970s. Experts began to seriously study the group of snow leopards in 2007 when the Sayano-Shushensky Nature Reserve was the first in Russia to use automatic photo cameras. In the course of meticulous work, they accumulated knowledge about the biology and ecology of snow leopards, learned to identify them and captured invaluable photos of these Red Book animals in the wild.