As of November 2026, estimates of how many snow leopards live in the wild run from roughly 3,900 to 6,500, and no one knows the number for sure, and the Population Assessment of the World's Snow Leopards (PAWS) uses interviews, sign surveys and camera traps to map where snow leopards live, then counts them in sample areas. Camera trapping is one of the scientifically robust methods of studying how many snow leopards live in an area, and camera-trap surveys identify individual snow leopards by the spot patterns on their coats. In 2019 Snow Leopard Trust reported research finding that less than 1 percent of snow leopard habitat had been surveyed with reliable scientific methods. Researchers tend to sample in the best habitats to get more photos or scat (droppings) samples, which can make density estimates too high. In some surveys, the smaller the area sampled, the higher the snow leopard density it reported, especially in areas under 500 square kilometres.

In a simulation (a practice run of a model) for Mongolia's Tost Mountains, researchers found snow leopard density appears to be around 0.8 cats per 100 square kilometres. In March 2021 the Snow Leopard Trust reported a preliminary estimate from a three-year survey: about 953 snow leopards in Mongolia, with final results still to come. The survey used nearly 1,500 camera traps and identified over 250 individuals, and the IUCN moved the snow leopard from Endangered to Vulnerable in 2017, and the Snow Leopard Trust describes that change in status as a non-genuine change, because it came from a revised estimate of mature individuals and did not reflect a measurable improvement. As of November 2026, the best guess in the latest IUCN assessment was that 2,710 to 3,386 mature, or grown-up, snow leopards remain in the wild, and the IUCN expects a 10% decline over the next three generations, about 22.6 years.

The 12 snow leopard range countries adopted the Bishkek Declaration at a conference in Bishkek in 2013 and set an initial goal to secure at least 20 snow leopard landscapes by 2020, and as of November 2026 the range countries have identified a total of 24 landscapes to secure. About 40 percent of the 170 protected areas across the snow leopard's range are smaller than the space one adult male needs. The snow leopard has been on Appendix I of CITES, which controls the trade in wild animals, since 1975. Snow leopards have been hunted for their fur, and as of November 2026 many countries have banned the import of snow leopard fur. As of November 2026, the IUCN Red List lists the snow leopard as Vulnerable, and the places where wild snow leopards live cover about 2 million square kilometres in 12 countries.

Snow leopards live high in the mountains of Central Asia. They are shy and hard to find, and they keep mainly to cliffs and rocky slopes. A 2025 study in Science Advances found five valid fossil records of the snow leopard lineage outside Tibet, and the same study suggests that snow leopards dispersed out of the Tibetan Plateau multiple times during the Quaternary. Scientists now call the snow leopard Panthera uncia; it has also been called Uncia uncia and Felis uncia. Snow leopards are thought to be more closely related to the tiger than to the leopard. Snow leopards are rock specialists, usually found in rugged areas, and the climate where they live is cold and dry. Cliffs and major ridgelines are the places they prefer for resting in the daytime.

A snow leopard's home range is the area where it lives and hunts. A study in Mongolia's South Gobi put GPS collars on 16 snow leopards between 2008 and 2014, and the collars logged each cat's location about four times a day for over a year. Males had home ranges of about 80 square miles and females about 48 square miles, much larger than earlier estimates. Where wild prey is plentiful, snow leopards can live on home ranges as small as 30 to 65 square kilometres, and as of November 2026 a home range can be over 1,000 square kilometres where prey is scarce. In winter some snow leopards move to lower ground, following their prey, and snow leopards move from place to place every day, and those that share an area keep about 2 kilometres from the nearest other snow leopard.

A snow leopard hunts by creeping up on its prey and then ambushing it, and the snow leopard is more inclined than other large cats to chase its prey, using agility across slopes. It can take prey that is two to three times its own weight. The three most important prey animals for snow leopards are the blue sheep (also called bharal), the Asiatic ibex and the argali. Snow leopards also eat smaller animals, such as marmots and birds. Snow leopards hunt a large animal about every 8 to 10 days on average, and one blue sheep in Nepal will give one snow leopard food for a week. A snow leopard eats slowly and stays with its food for several days, and as of November 2026 it can travel more than 25 miles in a single night.

A female snow leopard mates every second year, because she spends a long time raising her cubs. Snow leopards mate between January and mid-March, and a mother snow leopard is pregnant for about three months. She has her cubs in a sheltered rocky den, and she usually has two or three cubs in a litter. A cub's eyes open when it is about seven days old, and the cubs are much darker than their mother. A cub is ready to eat solid food at two months old and begins to follow its mother and learn to hunt at three months old. Cubs leave their mother when they are 18 to 22 months old. Snow leopards are old enough to have cubs when they are about two to three years old, and snow leopards in the wild are thought to live about ten to twelve years.

Words to know

• lineage: family line
• Quaternary: a time period
• dispersed: spread out
• density: how crowded
• declaration: a joint statement
• landscapes: large areas