Oversized paws grip the rocks, and a tail as thick as a man's arm acts as a balancing rod. An adult snow leopard is roughly the size of a golden retriever, but it can catch a mountain goat three times its own weight. And therein lies the snow leopard's plight. Until recent decades, the cats were protected by the sheer inaccessibility of their haunts. Today, their remote world is increasingly threatened by people.
People dress in tattered woolen clothes and flimsy tennis shoes.
Water is too precious to waste on bathing, so soot and dirt permanently blacken hands, arms and faces. Food is scarce since few crops grow at this altitude, and a normal diet consists almost entirely of potatoes, barley and wheat flour. Each household keeps a few sheep and goats, and losing even a single one to a snow leopard can bring a family to its knees. Life is also rugged in Mongolia , at the northeastern end of the snow leopard's range. Perhaps 1 million people there, almost half of the country's population, roam this barren landscape herding livestock.