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Could AI text alerts help save snow leopards from extinction?
Lovely is one of between 4,000 and 6,000 snow leopards on the planet
Snow leopards cannot growl. So when we step towards one of these fierce predators, she’s purring.
“Lovely,” as she’s called, was orphaned and rescued 12 years ago in Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan.
After years of relying on staff to feed her, she does not know how to hunt in the wild – and cannot be set free.
“If we release her, she would just go attack a farmer’s sheep and get killed,” Lovely’s caretaker, Tehzeeb Hussain, tells us.
Despite laws protecting them, between 221 to 450 snow leopards are killed each year, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) says, which has contributed to a 20% decline in the global population over the past two decades.
More than half of these deaths were in retaliation for the loss of livestock.
Now, scientists estimate that just 4,000 to 6,000 snow leopards are left in the wild – with roughly 300 of these in Pakistan, the third-largest population in the world.
To try and reverse these worrying trends, the WWF – with the help of Pakistan’s Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) – has developed cameras powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
Their aim is to detect a snow leopard’s presence and warn villagers via text message to move their livestock to safety.
The cameras operate using lithium batteries and solar panels
Tall, with a solar panel mounted on top, the cameras are positioned high among barren and rugged mountains at nearly 3,000m (9,843ft).
“Snow leopard territory,” says Asif Iqbal, a conservationist from WWF Pakistan. He walks us a few more steps and points to tracks on the ground: “These are pretty new.”
Asif hopes this means the camera has recorded more evidence that the AI software – which allows it to differentiate between humans, other animals and snow leopards – is working.
Trial and error
The WWF is currently testing 10 cameras, deployed across three villages in Gilgit-Baltistan. It has taken three years to train the AI model to detect these categories with impressive – if not perfect – accuracy.
Once we’re back down the mountain, Asif pulls up his computer and shows me a dashboard. There I am, in a series of GIFs. It correctly detects I’m a human. But as we scroll down the list, I come up again, and this time I’m listed as both a human and an animal. I’m wearing a thick white fleece, so I forgive the programme.
Then, Asif shows me the money shot. It’s a snow leopard, recorded a few nights prior, in night-vision. He pulls up another one from the week before. It’s a snow leopard raising its tail against a nearby rock. “It’s a mother leopard, looks like she’s marking her territory,” Asif says.
The cameras have been developed to detect a snow leopard’s presence and then warn villagers to move their livestock to safety
Setting up the cameras in rocky, high-altitude areas took a lot of trial and error. The WWF went through several types of batteries until it found one that could withstand the harsh winters. A specific paint was chosen to avoid reflecting light as animals pass by.
If the cellular service fails in the mountains, the device continues recording and capturing data locally. But the team has had to accept there are some problems they simply cannot solve.
While the camera lens is protected by a metallic box, they’ve had to replace solar panels damaged by landslides.
Doubt in the community
It is not just the technology that has caused problems. Getting the local community’s buy-in has also been a challenge. At first, some were suspicious and doubted whether the project could help them or the snow leopards.
“We noticed some of the wires had been cut,” Asif says. “People had thrown blankets over the cameras.”
The team also had to be mindful of the local culture and the emphasis on women’s privacy. Cameras had to be moved because women were walking by too often.
Some villages still have yet to sign consent and privacy forms, which means the technology cannot be rolled out in their area just yet. The WWF wants a binding promise that local farmers will not give poachers access to the footage.
Sitara says a snow leopard killed her sheep while they were grazing
Sitara lost all six of her sheep in January. She says she had taken them to graze on land above her home but that a snow leopard attacked them.
“It was three to four years of hard work raising those animals, and it all ended in one day,” she says.
The loss of her livelihood left her bedridden for several days. When asked if she is hopeful the AI cameras could help in the future, she replies: “My phone barely gets any service during the day, how can a text help?”
At a gathering of village elders, leaders of the Khyber village explain how attitudes have changed over the years, and that a growing proportion of their village understands the importance of snow leopards and their impact on the ecosystem.
According to the WWF, snow leopards hunt ibex and blue sheep, which stops these animals from overgrazing and helps to preserve grasslands so villagers can feed their livestock.
But not all are convinced. One local farmer questions the benefits of the animals.
“We used to have 40 to 50 sheep, now we’ve only got four or five, and the reason is the threat from snow leopards and from ibex eating the grass,” he says.
Climate change also has a part to play in why some feel threatened by snow leopards. Scientists say warming temperatures have led villagers to move their crops and livestock to higher areas in the mountains, encroaching on snow leopards’ own habitat, making livestock more of a target.
Whether the villagers are convinced by the conservation message or not, the WWF tells us legal penalties have served as a strong deterrent in recent years. Three men were jailed in 2020 after killing a snow leopard in Hoper valley, about a two-hour drive from Khyber. One of them had posted photos of himself with the dead animal on social media.
While those involved in the camera project are hopeful their AI devices can have an impact, they know they cannot be the sole solution.
In September, they are going to start trialling smells, sounds and lights at the camera sites to try to deter snow leopards from moving onto nearby villages, putting themselves and livestock in jeopardy.
Their work tracking these “ghosts of the mountains” is not over yet.
– Azadeh Moshiri, Usman Zahid and Kamil Khan Dayan
(BBC News)
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Jewels linked to Buddha remains go to auction, sparking ethical debate
The jewels comprise nearly 1,800 pearls, rubies, sapphires, and patterned gold sheets
On Wednesday, a cache of dazzling jewels linked to the Buddha’s mortal remains, which have been hailed as one of the most astonishing archaeological finds of the modern era, will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong.
For over a century these relics, unearthed from a dusty mound in northern India in 1898, have sat largely unseen, cradled by a private British collection.
Now, as the gems prepare to leave the custody of their keepers, they are stirring not just collectors’ appetites but also some unease.
They come from a glittering hoard of nearly 1,800 pearls, rubies, topaz, sapphires, and patterned gold sheets, first glimpsed deep inside a brick chamber in present-day Uttar Pradesh in India, near the Buddha’s birthplace.
Their discovery – alongside bone fragments identified by an inscribed urn as belonging to the Buddha himself – reverberated through the world of archaeology. Nicolas Chow, chairman of Sotheby’s Asia and worldwide head of Asian Art, believes this is “among the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of all time”.
Yet as these relics now face the glare of the auction room, experts tell the BBC that a question hangs heavy: can the sale of treasures so intimately woven into India’s sacred past be considered ethical?
William Claxton Peppé, an English estate manager, excavated the stupa and found the jewels
In 1898, William Claxton Peppé, an English estate manager, excavated a stupa at Piprahwa, just south of Lumbini, where the Buddha is believed to have been born. He uncovered relics inscribed and consecrated nearly 2,000 years ago.
Historians agree these relics, intact until then, are the heritage of both the Buddha’s Sakya clan descendants and Buddhists worldwide. The bone relics have since been distributed to countries such as Thailand, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, where they continue to be venerated.
“Are the relics of the Buddha a commodity that can be treated like a work of art to be sold on the market?” wonders Naman Ahuja, a Delhi-based art historian. “And since they aren’t, how is the seller ethically authorised to auction them?
“Since the seller is termed the ‘custodian’, I would like to ask – custodian on whose behalf? Does custodianship permit them now to sell these relics?”
Chris Peppé, great-grandson of William, told the BBC the family looked into donating the relics, but all options presented problems and an auction seemed the “fairest and most transparent way to transfer these relics to Buddhists”.
Julian King, Sotheby’s international specialist and head of sale, Himalayan Art, New York told the BBC the auction house had made a thorough review of the jewels.
“As is the case with any important items and collectibles that are offered for sale at Sotheby’s, we conducted requisite due diligence, including in relation to authenticity and provenance, legality and other considerations in line with our policies and industry standards for artworks and treasures,” King said.
Ashley Thompson, of Soas University of London, and curator Conan Cheong, both experts in Southeast Asian art, have more questions. In a joint statement they told the BBC: “Other ethical questions raised by the sale are: should human remains be traded? And who gets to decide what are human remains or not? For many Buddhist practitioners around the world, the gems on sale are part and parcel of the bones and ash.”
The sale of the relics has also sparked concern among Buddhist leaders.
“The Buddha teaches us not to take other people’s possessions without permission,” Amal Abeyawardene of London-based British MahaBodhi Society, told the BBC. “Historical records indicate that the Sakyamuni clan were granted custody of these relics, as the Buddha emanated from their community. Their wish was for these relics to be preserved alongside adornments, such as these gems, so that they may be venerated in perpetuity by the Buddha’s followers.”
The jewels were unearthed from this stupa in Piprahwa, northern India in 1898
Chris Peppé has written that the jewels passed from his great-uncle to his cousin, and in 2013 came to him and two other cousins. That’s when he began researching their discovery by his great-grandfather.
The Los Angeles-based television director and film editor wrote he had found 1898 newspaper reports – from Reuters to the New York Tribune – announcing the find of Buddha’s remains.
“The colonisation of India by the British had been a source of some cultural shame for me [and continues to be] but, amidst the treasure hunters who hauled their finds back to England, there had also been people focused on the pursuit of knowledge,” Chris Peppé writes.
He noted his research revealed a lot about his ancestors who he had dismissed as “prejudiced Victorians from a bygone era”.
“I learned that Willie Peppé’s first wife chose to travel around India for her honeymoon and loved the country and its culture. Sadly, she died from an unspecified illness. I learned that my grandmother was outraged at the land laws that applied to Indian women.
“And I learned that the excavation of the stupa was an attempt by Willie Peppé to provide work for his tenant farmers who had fallen victim to the famine of 1897.”
The jewels are considered among the most extraordinary archaeological finds of all time
He writes his great-grandfather’s “technical diagrams of ramps and pulleys suggest that he was also a trained engineer who couldn’t resist a project”.
William Peppé handed the gems, relics and reliquaries to the colonial Indian government: the bone relics went to the Buddhist King of Siam (Rama V). Five relic urns, a stone chest and most other relics were sent to the Indian Museum in Kolkata – then the Imperial Museum of Calcutta.
Only a small “portion of duplicates”, which he was allowed to keep, remained in the Peppé family, he notes. (Sotheby’s notes say Peppé was allowed to keep approximately one-fifth of the discovery.)
Sources told the BBC the auction house considers the “duplicates” to be original items considered surplus to those donated, which the “Indian government permitted Peppé to retain”.
Over the past six years years, the gems have featured in major exhibitions, including one at The Met in 2023. The Peppé family has also launched a website to “share our research”.
Four containers made of steatite (a type of stone) and one made of rock crystal were found inside a sandstone box at the Piprahwa stupa
Some scholars argue Buddha relics should never be treated as market commodities.
“The Sotheby’s auction transforms these highly sacred materials into saleable objects, in continuation of acts of colonial violence which extracted them from a stupa and called them ‘gems’ and ‘objects of interest to Europeans’, creating a false division with the ash and bone fragments they were consecrated with,” say Thompson and Cheong.
Chris Peppé told the BBC that in all the monasteries he had visited “no Buddhists regard these as corporeal relics”.
“A few Buddhist academics at western universities have recently offered a convoluted, fact-defying logic whereby they may be regarded as such. It’s an academic construct that is not shared by Buddhists in general who are familiar with the details of the find,” he said.
Peppé said the family “looked into donation [of the relics] to temples and museums and they all presented different problems on closer scrutiny”.
“An auction seems the fairest and most transparent way to transfer these relics to Buddhists and we are confident that Sotheby’s will achieve that.”
Some also point to The Koh-i-Noor, seized by the British East India Company and now part of the Crown Jewels, with many Indians viewing it as stolen. Should the Buddha’s jewels be next?
“Repatriation, I believe, is seldom necessary,” says Ahuja. “Such rare and sacred relics that are unique and which define a land’s cultural history, however, deserve the government’s exceptional attention.”
– Soutik Biswas
(India correspondent – BBC News)
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