Pictures: Images show snow leopard population thriving
- Published
Images from a new national park in Bhutan in Asia have revealed thriving populations of snow leopards. They were caught on automatic cameras, set up to locate hotspots of the animal.
Snow leopards are well-camouflaged - their almost-white coat with large spots blends in perfectly with the steep and rocky terrain that they live in. There are an estimated 4,500 to 7,500 snow leopards in the wild, with numbers thought to have gone down by a fifth in less than twenty years.
Here's a snow leopard at night. Half of all Bhutan's land is now protected and this national park - Wangchuck Centennial Park - provides a corridor for the animal between other snow leopard populations in the west and the east of Bhutan. Wildlife charity WWF say this link between populations will help the snow leopard numbers to do well in the future.
The snaps also revealed other wildlife including the wild dogs, musk deers, birds of prey and red foxes, like the one pictured here.
And here is the blue sheep - it's the snow leopard's main source of food.
Tibetan wolves were also snapped by the automatic cameras along with the snow leopards. Snow leopards are found in mountainous areas of central Asia, but are threatened by the loss of their habitat and prey, as well as being killed by humans for their skin or because hunters are angry that the snow leopard has eaten their other animals.