KATHMANDU — A Himalayan-dwelling snow leopard that somehow wound up in Nepal’s lowland plains at the start of the year will not be released back into the wild and will instead remain at Kathmandu’s Central Zoo, officials have said. The juvenile male snow leopard (Panthera uncia) was found injured on Jan. 23 on the outskirts of the town of Urlabari. The discovery came as a surprise to locals and conservationists alike, given that Urlabari lies in Nepal’s “tiger country,” at an elevation of 146 meters (480 feet), whereas snow leopards in Nepal have only ever been recorded at elevations higher than 2,000 m (6,600 ft). The big cat was subsequently captured and sent to Kathmandu for treatment. “The animal has recovered from injuries to its right foreleg and can now stand upright,” said Naresh Subedi, member-secretary at the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC), the semigovernmental body that manages Central Zoo. A committee formed by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation to assess what to do with the animal, and find out why it was so far down from its mountain habitat, has decided to keep it at the zoo. Snow leopard at ease in its high-mountain habitat. Image courtesy of Madhu Chetri. “The committee recommended that the animal shouldn’t be released into the wild,” said Shyam Kumar Shah, information officer at the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation. Because the zoo doesn’t have air-conditioned facilities available for the snow leopard, the animal remains in its quarantine…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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