India presented its science-based snow leopard conservation advances at a Moscow Roundtable attended by range countries including Russia. The Wildlife Institute of India spearheads the effort under Project Snow Leopard, using camera traps and sign surveys for the first-ever national population estimate of 718 individuals across Himalayas and trans-Himalayan landscapes. India hosts approximately 70 percent of global high-altitude snow leopard habitat. The roundtable signalled growing multilateral cooperation among the twelve range countries that share the species' fragmented mountain territory.

The snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List — a critical distinction for exam purposes, since it was downlisted from Endangered in 2017. India is one of twelve range countries spanning Central and South Asia's mountain ecosystems, from Afghanistan to China and Russia.

Project Snow Leopard (PSL) was launched in India in 2009 under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). It covers five Himalayan and trans-Himalayan states: Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh. The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, is the technical nodal body.

India's first-ever national population estimate — 718 snow leopards — was published in 2023, using a standardised camera-trap methodology called PAWS (Population Assessment of the World's Snow Leopards), a framework coordinated by GSLEP (Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program). GSLEP was launched in 2013 at the Bishkek Declaration, signed by all twelve range countries.

The Moscow Roundtable advances the GSLEP framework, which targets securing at least 20 snow leopard landscapes by 2020 and beyond. The static hinterland here is the intersection of IUCN status, nodal ministry, technical institute, international programme name, and the population count — all classic examiner blanks.