Padma Rigzin

PADMA RIGZIN, then a graduate student at Shiv Nadar University, Uttar Pradesh, India, was awarded a grant in April 2023 to aid research on “Exploring Contemporary Ladakh: Human-snow leopard Relationships in the Anthropocene,” supervised by Dr. Vasundhara Bhojvaid. The project asks how snow leopards have come to generate immense affective responses from humans. The grantee conducted nine months of fieldwork, which was divided into two phases. The first phase: April to September 2023, and the second: June to August 2024. Four months were spent among conservationists, two months among tourists, and three months among wildlife photographers and hosts in villages. The grantee spent time with conservationists from Snow Leopard Conservancy-India Trust. Conservation is more than a rational, science-based profession and involves an emotional connection with the cat. For the tourists, it was noticed that the circulating images of snow leopards play an essential role in their visits to remote villages in Ladakh. Snow leopard tourism is a livelihood source for hosts as trackers and drivers, which demand embodied skilled labor from them. Among the photographers, research found that there is a hierarchy of images. At the top is the picture of the snow leopard in kill attempts, followed by the snow leopard with a kill, followed by the snow leopard with cubs and on the snow in the background.