Another factor that is aiding in the decline of the snow leopards population is changes in the environment. There as been an increase in the number of people moving into the snow leopards territory with the purpose of agriculture, business and live stock farming http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=31574. This then causes snow leopards to retreat to higher grounds or to stay and compete with humans, killing their livestock and in turn being killed in retaliation by the farmer. Global Warming is also an issue snow leopards tend to reside above the tree line and below the permanent snow line because of increased temperatures snow lines are gradually moving back forcing them to move higher in the mountains where vegetation and their prey are scarce.
There are an estimated 3,500-7,000 snow leopards left in the wild and approximately another 600-700 in the zoos around the world. http://www.snowleopard.org/islt/facts/population.html
The snow leopards have an approximate density range from about 0.8 animals per 100-km2 http://lynx.uio.no/catfolk/uncia-05.htm
The snow leopards range covers the immense region surrounding Central Asia’s deserts and plateaus. It is estimated that their range throughout the mountainous system covers approximately 2.3 million km². However the snow leopard has very fragmented distribution throughout this stretch of domain and only 1.6 million km² is actually occupied by habitat http://www.redlist.org/search/details.php?species=22732