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Snow leopard caught on camera in Kazakhstan

In the video footage, provided by the Russian branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the animal native to Central and South Asia was seen in its natural habitat, walking around, carefully observing the terrain and sniffing the camera.

The camera traps caught the snow leopard in January and February 2021, but it took several months for the WWF to release the footage as the devices were installed in remote areas of Katon-Karagai National Park and Dzungarian Alatau mountain range in eastern Kazakhstan.

Snow leopards live in high alpine areas, where they hunt and reproduce.

They are often poetically called "ghosts of the mountains" as they are very stealthy and rarely seen.

According to estimates by WWF Asia, there are only about 100-110 snow leopards left in Kazakhstan due to human activities such as poaching and overgrazing.The camera traps installed in the Kazakh mountains also captured mountain goats, a lynx and wolverines walking around snowy peaks.