Community-protected areas

75-80% of the snow leopard's habitat in Mongolia is outside of specially protected areas. Therefore, various threats and pressures are arising in this region, affecting the population and habitat of snow leopards and ungulates.

Since 2009, the IHS has been working with local communities and communities to find ways to protect and legally support them in their use of pastures. Currently, we are working with more than 30 communities to improve the legal framework for protected areas. We have been working to determine the official boundaries of the protected areas based on the communities’ natural resource use and traditional grazing patterns.

Article 3, Section 2.8 of the Law on Environmental Protection states that " a partnership for the collective management of natural resources " means a partnership that grants local communities the right to protect, rationally use, and restore natural resources, organizes resource use in a joint, transparent, and fair manner, and distributes the benefits equally among the community. The area under the partnership's responsibility for protection is defined as "an area where local communities and herders, as formal legal entities (partnerships), live, protect, and rationally use natural resources."

Figure. Collaborative partnerships and their HSE