Dr. Rodney Jackson from the Snow Leopard Conservancy reported that in a year one snow leopard from a National Park in India ate:
5 wild sheep, 1 domestic sheep, 5 domestic goats, 9 woolly hares, 25 marmots and 15 birds.
Marmots seem to be the snow leopard’s favourite food.
Photo Credit: NaturesFan1226 via Compfight
So what would happen if the Snow Leopard became extinct?
Sheep, hare, marmot and goats are all herbivores. They eat plants. Marmots for example eat grass, berries, lichen and moss, roots and flowers.
So can you imagine what would happen if
the Snow Leopard was taken out of the food chain?
We guess that the herbivore population would not get eaten by the Snow Leopard.
Then the population of marmots, hares, sheep and goats would grow and grow.
Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk via Compfight
They would eat a lot of plants and vegetation.
There would be ‘over grazing’
There would be very little grass and plants left.
Then the herbivores; the marmots, hares, sheep and goats
wouldn’t have enough food to eat.
If there were a lot less flowers, plants and grass,
the butterflies and other insects that pollinate the meadows would disappear also.
Photo Credit: Andrey Salikov via Compfight
You can read more about the Snow Leopard here @ Snow Leopard Conservancy.org
If the Snow Leopard became extinct this would upset the ‘balance of nature’.
Check out another story HERE ; a good news story from ‘Sustainable Human’.
It tells what happened when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone Park in the USA.