2.3 Snow leopard scat collection
From early April to mid-May (42 days) in 2012, 83 putative snow leopard scat samples were collected within 27 grids (432 km2) along the 140 transects (290 km). At least two transects each 1- 1.5 km apart within each sampling grid was used following the technique used by Thapa, 2007 adopted from Jackson & Hunter (1996). The length of transects was dependent on the terrain and human accessibility. To minimize collection of erroneous samples, scats were collected at snow leopard scrape sites and further discriminated by size and shape. A portion (~1 CM2; Janecka et al., 2011) of the collected scat samples were stored in 15 ml vials with silica desiccant ( Janecka et al., 2008), labeled (with grid number, transect number, date, location, sample ID, GPS location etc.) and kept at room temperature prior to DNA analyses. Remaining portions of each sample were sun dried and put into paper envelopes for diet analysis.