Over the past two years, SLN members Yash Veer Bhatnagar and Charudutt Mishra of the International Snow Leopard Trust (ISLT) and the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) have been largely responsible for organizing and carrying out a series of state-level conferences in cooperation with the Wildlife Institute of India and governments of Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu & Kashmir with the purpose of identifying regions that need to be included in Project Snow Leopard (PSL). This series of conferences resulted in a concept paper calling for a scientifically sound and socially responsible high altitude wildlife conservation strategy involving the State and Central Governments, representatives of the local communities, and conservation and development NGOs.

Snow leopard conservationists experienced a major success as a result of these and other dedicated individuals’ efforts; the series of smaller conferences culminated in a very successful national conference which took place on 10-11 July, 2006, in Ladakh, India. The workshop facilitated the exchange of information between the forest departments of the five states with high-altitude ecosystems and the MoEF, and a set of recommendations decided upon to guide the drafting and implementation of a PSL document.

Project Snow Leopard is a conservation initiative modeled after Project Tiger and Project Elephant.