Agencies Islamabad

Footage of four, rarely-seen snow leopards clambering up snowy cliffs in northern Pakistan has created a frenzy of excitement among conservationists. Snow leopards are among the world’s most elusive creatures in the wild and it is hard to catch even one on camera, let alone four, with the sighting being celebrated as a success story for Pakistan’s conservation efforts.

Sakhawat Ali, a gamekeeper and photography enthusiast from the remote village of Hushe, captured the footage on March 13 after what he described as “two weeks of tracking their pawprints” through the snow-covered Central Karakoram National Park,  close to K2, the world’s second highest mountain. Ali told CNN the four snow leopards were a mother and its  three cubs. Nobody at his village could recall ever seeing four snow leopards together, he said.

Ali  spotted the mother first, then started noting additional pawprints. He later “got lucky” sighting the animals together while observing a nearby cliff, through binoculars, from the rooftop of his house. He saw them scamper out through  his camera to film them, from a distance of 200 meters. Environmental anthropologist Shafqat Hussain says the rocky terrain in the north of Pakistan is perhaps the “best snow leopard habitat in the world”.

Snow leopards are currently listed as “vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Known locally as the “ghost of the mountains”, they camouflage easily in their natural habitat of the Karakoram Mountain range in Pakistan’s Gilgit Baltistan region.