Ak-Ilbirs: A Climate Corridor for Kyrgyzstan's Snow Leopards

Kyrgyzstan holds an estimated 300 snow leopards, but climate change is pushing their prey and habitat uphill, fragmenting the mountain ranges they depend on. In 2025 the Ilbirs Foundation, working with CAMP Alatoo and 14 rural municipalities, helped designate the Ak-Ilbirs ('white leopard') ecological corridor, modeled with climate scientists from Humboldt University Berlin to stay viable under 2070 warming scenarios. Unlike a conventional reserve, the corridor keeps grazing and forestry legal but layers on community-run monitoring, ranger patrols, and camera traps; a 2025 pilot across 78,000 hectares found herders followed agreed grazing rules over 90% of the time. The foundation also tracks household income, finding families who diversify into conservation-linked work outearn traditional herding alone.