Dr. Rodney Jackson

Rodney, Snow Leopard Conservancy’s Founder–Director, is the leading expert on wild snow leopards and their high-mountain habitat. Recipient of the 1981 Rolex Award for Enterprise, his pioneering radio-tracking study of these big cats in the remote mountains of the Nepalese Himalaya led to the cover story in the June 1986 National Geographic. He prepared the snow leopard section of the IUCN-World Conservation Union’s Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan for Cats, which serves as the definitive document on the needs and opportunities for preservation of the earth’s remaining wild cats. He currently sits on the IUCN’s Cat Specialist Core Group.

Rodney formerly served as Conservation Director for the International Snow Leopard Trust, leading the standardization of snow leopard field survey methods across the twelve snow leopard host countries. This methodology is referred to as the Snow Leopard Information Management System (SLIMS). Working with partner agencies, he has trained biologists in these survey methods in nature reserves in China, Pakistan, Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan, and India. Rodney was instrumental in developing the in-country Snow Leopard Conservationist program for the Snow Leopard Trust, along with its Natural Partnerships Program, which involves zoos in conserving snow leopards in the wild.

The Snow Leopard Conservancy has grown out of Rodney’s twenty years’ experience gained in working closely with rural herders and farmers whose lives are directly impacted when snow leopards prey upon their livestock.

His work has been funded by the National Geographic Society, Smithsonian Institution, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Agency for International Development, Wildlife Conservation Society, WWF, and others. His publications include “Estimating Snow Leopard Population Abundance Using Photography and Capture–Recapture Techniques,” in the Wildlife Society Bulletin; the section on snow leopards and clouded leopards for the Encyclopedia of Mammals; the Proceedings of the 8th International Snow Leopard Symposium, co-edited with A. Ahmad and published in 1997 by the International Snow Leopard Trust, Seattle and WWF-Pakistan; “Cats Up Close: Snow Leopards,” in Great Cats: Majestic Creatures of the Wild, Rodale Press, 1991; and popular articles for International Wildlife, Animal Kingdom, and Geo (France and Germany).

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