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Yarko came to The Big Cat Sanctuary on a breeding recommendation to be a potential partner for our female snow leopard Laila
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Gentle and calm in nature, it wasn't long before Yarko appeared very happy to be with a companion. Once they shared an enclosure, Yarko and Laila were regularly seen cuddling up at night
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Yarko first became a father in 2019 when Laila gave birth to two male cubs, Koshi and Khumbu
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He took to parenthood perfectly and the family lived all together before the boys were given their recommendations and went off to join breeding partners themselves
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In 2021 Yarko became a dad for the second time with the arrival of Shen - and once again Yarko demonstrated wonderful parenting skills
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In 2023 Yarko became a dad for the third time when Zaya and Attan arrived - his first daughter and fourth son
Yarko arrived at The Big Cat Sanctuary in June 2013. He is a big handsome boy and can regularly be seen sitting outside watching what is going on around the site.
He’s fathered three litters with his breeding partner Laila – four boys and one girl. The current cubs Zaya and Attan mix with him regularly, as he is a terrific father!
Snow leopards have extra-long dense fur, small ears, a stocky build, and a long tail that doubles up as a scarf when sleeping – all features that make them experts at retaining body heat. They also have large wide paws for walking steadily in snow.
Dappled shades of grey, yellow and creamy white give snow leopards the perfect disguise for their natural habitat’s rocky terrain. As they move across the mountainous peaks and valleys of the Himalayas and surrounding foothills they are almost invisible to the human eye – hence their nickname: ‘the ghost of the mountains’.
With a global population estimated at fewer than 2,500 mature breeding individuals, snow leopards are listed as Vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.
Adopt YarkoThe snow leopard typically lives at elevations of around 3,000-4,500 metres in arid and semi-arid shrub land and grassland. In Russia and parts of the Tian Shan in China, they live in open coniferous forest. Generally, however, they avoids dense forest, preferring steep terrain broken by cliffs, ridges, gullies and rocky outcrops.
Snow leopards can kill prey up to three times their own weight, and must kill a large animal about once every fortnight to survive. They hunt ibex, deer, boars, marmots and other small rodents, but sometimes turn to domestic livestock when wild prey is scarce. Across its range, the snow leopard is hunted for its highly-prized pelt and bones, despite its protection under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Snow leopards are persecuted because they sometimes prey on domestic livestock. This is partly due to a declining prey base, which has been over-hunted by herders under the misperception that the prey species compete with domestic livestock for forage. Occasionally this leads to the retaliatory killing of snow leopards by herders protecting their livelihoods. As grazing pressure intensifies from an increasing population of domestic livestock, snow leopard-human conflict is an ever increasing threat to the snow leopard’s survival.
Adopt Yarko