The Tsarap Chu Conservation Reserve (1,585 km²) in Spiti is operationalized as India’s largest conservation reserve, backed by donations and community management to protect snow leopards, ibex and cold-desert biodiversity.
Himachal’s high cold deserts received a major conservation boost in 2025 when the state formally notified the Tsarap Chu Conservation Reserve in the Spiti Valley — an expansive protected landscape covering about 1,585 square kilometres that conservationists say will become a linchpin for snow-leopard and high-altitude biodiversity protection while offering a model of community-led stewardship for fragile Himalayan ecosystems; notified under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, the reserve brings under protection a mosaic of alpine pastures, rugged ridgelines and glacial streams that sustain species such as the snow leopard, Himalayan ibex, bharal and a rich assemblage of cold-adapted birds. Conservation partners have already stepped forward: the International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA) and other donors have pledged funds (reported donations in the crores) to jump-start management planning, community engagement and monitoring, and the state forest department has signalled the formation of a local management committee that will include panchayat representatives — a design intended to align biodiversity goals with livelihood needs such as regulated eco-tourism, handicrafts and community rangers. Ecologists stress that the reserve’s scale is its strength: large, connected habitats reduce edge effects, allow natural movement of wide-ranging predators and provide buffers against the effects of climate warming that are causing upward shifts in species’ ranges and altering snow-melt hydrology; yet they also warn that infrastructure, if poorly sited, could fragment habitat and that tourism growth must be carefully planned to avoid disturbance to denning and migratory periods. Plans on the table include capacity building for local monitors, deployment of non-intrusive camera-trap grids, conflict-mitigation protocols to reduce livestock losses, and training programs that funnel eco-tourism income into village trusts. For a region that has felt the twin pressures of warming, glacial change and expanding visitor numbers, Tsarap Chu represents an ambitious attempt to safeguard ecological processes at landscape scale while creating tangible benefits for mountain communities — a conservation experiment that other Himalayan states are watching closely.
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