FY 2016 Semi-annual Report: Conservation and Adaptation in Asia’s High Mountain Landscapes and Communities

The project focuses on strengthening local natural resource institutions' governance and capacity, as well as building governance capacity of local community herder groups to develop sustainable pasture and watershed management plans. In Bhutan, the Wangchuck Centennial National Park staff members conducted a traveling Snow Leopard Day education program that visited five primary schools in the park's Tang and Chokor Geogs. The program targeted children from yak herding families and presented topics such as snow leopard and prey species ecology, snow leopard habitat, and conservation methods for protecting the snow leopard. A total of 600 students attended the events. In India, WWF organized a wildlife conservation education stall at the Lachen Village Losar Festival in Sikkim. The stall featured an exhibit of camera trap photos of wildlife taken during the recent AHM-funded camera trap survey of North Sikkim. Over 150 community members and tourists visited the photo exhibition and gained a new appreciation for local wildlife. In the Kyrgyz Republic, WWF published a collection of scenarios for community ecological theatre performances in Russian and Kyrgyz. The handbook includes short dramas addressing different components of nature and ecosystems that illustrate conservation issues in simple language on both a local and global scale. The handbook is being distributed for free to schools, children's ecological clubs, and conservation NGOs in the Kyrgyz Republic. In Mongolia, the Ministry of Environment, Green Development, and Tourism officially requested WWF's support for development of an integrated water resource management plan for the Khuisiin Gobi-Tsetseg River Basin. WWF and MEGDT jointly drafted the terms of reference for plan development, and WWF signed cooperation agreements on plan development with both the Khuisiin Gobi and the Khovd Aimag. The project also made progress in developing a watershed management plan for the upper Tamor River basin in Nepal. WWF held stakeholder consultation workshops in five key villages along an elevational gradient in this watershed. In Pakistan, a late autumn ibex survey at the AHM Hoper Valley project site in Gilgit Baltistan revealed a large, stable increase in the ibex population since systematic surveys were first conducted there in July 2013. A Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program side event about climate-smart snow leopard landscape management planning was organized by the Snow Leopard Trust, WWF, and the GSLEP Secretariat on the sidelines of the UNFCCC CoP 21 negotiations in Paris. The event was well attended by representatives of seven out of twelve GSLEP member countries. The project's progress is a result of the collaborative efforts of WWF, local associations, NGOs, and government agencies. The project's objectives are to promote climate-smart management of snow leopard habitat for sustainable development in Asia's high mountain landscapes and communities. The project's activities focus on strengthening local natural resource institutions' governance and capacity, as well as building governance capacity of local community herder groups to develop sustainable pasture and watershed management plans.