Elusive snow leopard and cub inspect hidden camera in rare footage

A mother snow leopard and her cub have been filmed inspecting a hidden video camera in the Himalayas in rare footage released by the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF).

Shot in Mongolia in February 2015 the just-released video shows the two big cats checking out the mysterious object as they sniff around a rocky shelter.

The video comes as a new WWF report seeks to focus international attention on the continuous decline in snow leopard numbers throughout Central Asia.

The report highlights that snow leopards are just one of many creatures at risk of major disruption if the effects of climate change are not alleviated.

330 million people exist within 10kms of vital river that flows from the territory where snow leopards are found and any change in the flow of water through the region will have serious effects on the human population downstream, the report claims.

Figures from the WWF’s  ‘Snow Leopard SOS’ campaign state that numbers have dropped more than 20 percent over the last two decades, leaving as few as 4000 of the creatures in the wild.

This has occurred in spite of the snow leopard being placed on the world’s foremost endangered species list in 1972.

The campaign states that the threat of poaching combined with a number of other factors, including the impact of climate change, places an enormous amount of pressure on the iconic leopard’s ongoing existence.

WWF spokesperson Lorin Hancock told Discovery News that the growing level of people living in higher altitude areas of Central Asia is directly associated with the decline in snow leopard numbers.