In a period of rapid environmental change, an unprecedented human-induced decline in biodiversity has brought the world to the brink of a sixth mass extinction, breaching a major planetary boundary. Climate change is predicted to exacerbate this decline. Scientists argue that the Earth has now shifted from the comfortable conditions of the Holocene, which allowed for humans to flourish, to a human-dominated epoch prospectively denoted the “Anthropocene,” in which humans have overwhelmed the Earth's systems. These conditions have given rise to demands for decisive actions to halt biodiversity loss through ambitious efforts such as dedicating half the planet to “nature” to survive, revive, and thrive. While the utility and implications of such proposals are being hotly debated, the urgency of biodiversity conservation is palpable. It is in this context that The Snow Leopard and the Goat: Politics of Conservation in the Western Himalayas by Shafqat Hussain intervenes. Carefully documenting the history of the snow leopard and its trade around the world, evaluating the science associated with snow leopard conservation and its uncertainties, and contextualizing it with rich ethnographic work, Hussain makes an important contribution to highlight the challenges and dynamics of operationalizing global conservation priorities at the local level.

The case that Hussain discusses should, by rights, be a “success story.” The International Union for Conservation of Nature has lowered the threat status of snow leopards (Panthera uncia, an iconic, charismatic, elusive species found in remote and treacherous Himalayan landscapes) from “endangered” to “vulnerable.” However, this development unravels the political economy of conservation efforts. Lowering the threat status in response to reassessment of the snow leopard population can make the funding directed toward snow leopard conservation vulnerable. This has created a significant rift among conservation organizations and scientists.

Hussain's monograph makes an ambitious effort to capture a diverse set of theoretical threads woven through current debates on biodiversity conservation. Particularly, the book is in conversation with discussions about the artificial human-nature divide; the role of uncertainty and its entanglement in the political economy of degradation and conservation; the stereotyping of farmers as noble savages or otherwise; and the failings of fortress conservation and giving agency to animals. Hussain highlights the challenges of researching an extremely elusive predator that lives in a treacherous and remote landscape, compounding the costs of data collection and introducing major uncertainty in ascertaining the status of this snow leopard population. Such challenges are particularly characteristic of research in the High Himalaya. This uncertainty in data collection and interpretation has led to the downgrading of the threat status of the snow leopard, causing significant rifts among conservationists.

The main thesis of Hussain's work is that communities that find themselves in high-biodiversity landscapes should not be forced to bear the costs of global conservation priorities. Hussain, through his personal experience with creating a compensatory mechanism for the loss of livestock due to predation (a livestock insurance program for farmers), highlights positive outcomes in terms of the farmers’ attitudes and practices. While this suggestion is not new, it has been countered by concerns about payments for conservation activities, highlighting the neoliberal monetization of existing relationships between communities and their environments. Acknowledging but diverging from such concerns, Hussain argues that in this region, nonmonetary relationships have already been replaced by new ones based on market rationality, as a result of previous development efforts by the Agha Khan Foundation, and that compensation may help make the farmers somewhat “indifferent” to the loss of their livestock. Hussain raises a strong point: in the twenty-first century, it will be hard to find communities whose relationships (with nature and otherwise) have been untouched by market-based ethics and rationale. Hence, Hussain builds a strong case for monetary compensation to communities, which have often subsidized conservation through the predation of their livestock. Even so, conservation practitioners may wish to see Hussain's thesis developed further, providing a more robust framework for designing compensatory mechanisms.

Apart from the neoliberal implications of compensating farmers for the loss of livestock to large predators, another key concern around compensation, which Hussain acknowledges, is that it depends on international donor-based mechanisms with low budgetary allocations for biodiversity conservation and its sustainability. Especially in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic-related shifts in funding priorities, the potential for variability in such funding streams merits consideration. If funding for snow leopard conservation were curtailed, removing an income stream for farmers who rely on the compensation of lost livestock, might this lead to retaliatory killings of snow leopards preying on goats? While it is hard to quibble with Hussain's point that locals should be fully compensated, compensation may not solve the challenge completely, and compensation programs may still need to be integrated with other development-based efforts. What else should be done along with compensation to reduce such difficult but potentially likely conditions? Hussain argues that these relationships and their ethics are products of the historical and current dynamics and can change again. Hence, long-term conservation requires greater integration and continuous adaptation of diverse pro-conservation non/monetary mechanisms; compensation can be one piece of the solution. The question, then, is what combination of conservation interventions will sustain long-term pro-conservation attitudes and practices within communities?

These provocations aside, The Snow Leopard and the Goat is an insightful and accessible ethnographic work, which will be of enduring interest to students and practitioners interested in learning about conservation and its politics.