Retaliatory Killings

In some cases, such as in the case of the Argali sheep, snow leopards are not the only ones preying on these animals. The leopards are required to compete with local communities who also hunt for these sheep. In such cases, natural prey becomes harder to come by forcing these leopards to kill livestock for a better chance of survival. However, they put themselves at risk of getting killed by local farmers  when they prey on sheep, horses and goats.

In such cases, these farmers are left with no other choice but to retaliate against these leopards since many depend on their livestock as their main source of income. Many of these herders use poison, traps and rifles to kill the wild snow leopards to ensure that this does not happen again and to prevent their families from suffering any financial hardship.

Thus, with increasing dependence on such livestock, comes increased competition for preys, which will inevitably cause the death of more of these endangered leopards by local farmers.