Where the Snow Leopards are, Charlotte.
- Ximena Neri
- Feb 28, 2019
- 5 min read
You don´t need to see them to feel their presence. The tracks they leave behind are enough to trigger our imagination, and discover new things about their ecology and conservation. Charlotte works with Snow Leopards (Panthera uncia) in China, and is helping better understand their dietary habits, how much they rely on cattle and if the altitude changes their feeding behavior.
Charlotte Hacker works with Snow Leopard populations at the Tibetan Plateau in China, but also in Mongolia and Northern Pakistan. She uses a noninvasive approach alongside other researchers collecting scat in snow leopard habitat, then extracting DNA from the scat to figure out population parameters such as abundance, density, genetic diversity, relatedness, and genetic structure.
She also examines prey DNA found in scat samples to determine what snow leopards are eating. Charlotte is also interested in high altitude adaptations at the genomic level and how this may vary throughout snow leopard range across elevational gradients.
Currently she is pursuing a Phd in Biology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; and her aim is to use genetic and behavioral scientific methodologies to find effective conservation management solutions for at-risk mammals living in human-dominate landscapes.
"There are so many endless research questions, and the applications for using findings to promote human-carnivore coexistence are direct and measurable, so I’m super stoked about it." - Charlotte.
Q&A with Charlotte
Q: How did you start working with Snow Leopards?
A: It’s a round-about story, and a bit serendipitous. I actually fell in love with conservation science studying African elephants, and I’ll always have a soft spot for them. When I decided to start my doctorate I knew I wanted to tackle something different. I became interested in human-wildlife conflict mitigation while living in Africa, so carnivores really appealed to me.
During the early stages of my PhD program search I started doing behavior and welfare observation on a snow leopard at the zoological institution I was employed at. After learning more about them and their natural history, I was completely blown away by how little we know about such a recognizable and charismatic animal. I then narrowed my search down to researchers who worked with scat (I had done some elephant hormone work with dung and really enjoyed it), found my now advisor, applied to my current doctoral program and hit the ground running that fall with grant writing to get to China for sampling with Chinese collaborators that summer. I thankfully made it out to Beijing for the summer of 2017, and once I saw snow leopard habitat I was hooked and never looked back.
Q: Which have been the most challenging situations of being a woman working in carnivore biology in a foreign country?
A: I’ve been very fortunate. I work with an amazing and supportive research team in China, including another female Chinese PhD student that I clicked with right away. I’ve never felt that anyone doubted me or thought I was less capable because I was a woman, but there are often cultural differences that may at times be difficult for me to understand. I think the most challenging and ultimately isolating aspect is the language barrier, but it pushes me to improve my Chinese and I’m slowly but surely getting there.
"I was completely blown away by how little we know about such a recognizable and charismatic animal. Once I saw snow leopard habitat I was hooked and never looked back."- Charlotte
Q: Have you ever been involved in a situation that involved a conflict between snow leopards and humans?
A: Snow leopards are cryptic and elusive, so much of their negative interactions with humans surround livestock predation.
Knowledge of herder attitudes and perceptions towards snow leopards and other large carnivores within the context of livestock predation is necessary for gauging how best to encourage wildlife stewardship. We do this by administrating standardized surveys in an interview format. Through this process, we hear story after story of herders’ financial stability being absolutely obliterated due to mass livestock loss events.
One herder lost nearly half his sheep when a snow leopard managed to get inside of a corral and panicked, causing injury or death to several sheep while only feeding on one carcass. Another herder lost eight yak calves over the course of a summer to a snow leopard he suggested may be a female with denned cubs nearby.
This frustration can cause herders to retaliate against the predator with lethal means to eliminate the threat of continued livestock loss. Livestock insurance can help offset some of the financial burden, but they often take a long time to process and don’t cover the full value of the animal.
Q: What is the thing you study that excites you the most?
A: There are three primary components to my dissertation, but my favorite is definitely the use of molecular dietary analysis to figure out what snow leopards are eating.
I’m predominately focused on livestock dependency, but am also interested in determining how often snow leopards feed on small mammals and birds, and how their diet changes through time (seasonally and yearly).
There are so many endless research questions, and the applications for using findings to promote human-carnivore coexistence are direct and measurable, so I’m super stoked about it.
Q: What advice would you give to early female conservationists looking to work with large carnivores?
A: Sometimes I joke that I’m getting my doctorate in tenacity, but I do think it’s an important component to pursuing whatever your research goals are. Don’t give up. Many of us get into this field because we’re crazy passionate about it, so use that drive to be persistent and remember that not every opportunity is going to work out (and it’s probably for a bigger reason the universe has in store that you just don’t understand yet).
I also can’t stress how important is to be willing to get out of your comfort zone. It can be something as simple as introducing yourself to a big cat researcher at a conference, to traveling half-way around the world for a research opportunity. The most amazing and fruitful outcomes of my research came from a place of insane fear, but I took a deep breath and did it anyway.
I would also advise setting yourself up with a core network of strong female scientists in your field. In snow leopard world, there are several of us. It’s so refreshing and motivating to see numerous women in science from different countries working in different capacities for snow leopard conservation, and I’m really thankful for it.
In the words of Charlotte, the role of women in carnivore conservation is motivating. She comes from Delaware, USA and is now in China advocating to know more about this elusive cat, whose conservation status in controversial.
Her advocacy and work are a huge inspiration, and I am certain that the results from her thesis will bring much needed information to human-carnivore coexistence managers to better study the interactions of this magnificent carnivore with people in the region.
If you want to know more about Charlotte, you can find her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/chacker414 She has suuper amazing Snow Leopard pictures, so, I recommend following her 10/10. Also, she has a blog where you can read more about her and her artwork! https://charhacker.weebly.com/
Thank you for being our guest and sharing your experiences with us!
- Xim Neri
If you know an amazing conservationist working for human-wildlife coexistence (probably it´s you) whose story you´d love to read, let me know to arrange an interview!
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