International trade is prohibited by the Wildlife Protection Act in India.[citation needed] Snow Leopard Foundation (SLF) in Pakistan conducts research on the current status of Himalayan brown bears in the Pamir Range in Gilgit-Baltistan, a promising habitat for the bears and a wildlife corridor connecting bear populations in Pakistan to central Asia.

The project also intends to investigate the conflicts humans have with the bears, while promoting tolerance for bears in the region through environmental education. SLF received funding from the Prince Bernhard Nature Fund and Alertis.Unlike other brown bear subspecies, which are found in good numbers,[6] the Himalayan brown bear is highly endangered.

They are poached for their fur and claws for ornamental purposes and internal organs for use in medicines. They are killed by shepherds to protect their livestock and their home is destroyed by human encroachment. In Himachal, their home is the Kugti and Tundah wildlife sanctuaries and the tribal Chamba region. The tree bearing the state flower of Himachal, buransh, is the favourite habitat of the bear. Due to the high value of the buransh tree, it is commercially cut causing further destruction to the brown bear's home.

The populations in Pakistan are slow reproducing, small, and declining because of habitat loss, fragmentation, poaching, and bear-baiting. In India, brown bears are present in 23 protected areas in the northern states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttaranchal, but only in two of these the bears are regarded as fairly common. There are about 150- 200 bears in total.

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The tiger has a muscular body with powerful forelimbs, a large head and a tail that is about half the length of its body. Its pelage is dense and heavy, and colouration varies between shades of orange with white ventral areas and distinctive vertical black stripes; the patterns of which are unique in each individual. Stripes are likely advantageous for camouflage in vegetation such as long grass with strong vertical patterns of light and shade. The tiger is one of only a few striped cat species; it is not known why spotted patterns and rosettes are the more common camouflage pattern among felids. The orange colour may also aid in camouflage as the tiger's prey are dichromats, and thus may perceive the cat as green and blended in with the vegetation.

A tiger's coat pattern is still visible when it is shaved. This is not due to skin pigmentation, but to the stubble and hair follicles embedded in the skin. It has a mane-like heavy growth of fur around the neck and jaws and long whiskers, especially in males. The pupils are circular with yellow irises. The small, rounded ears have a prominent white spot on the back, surrounded by black. These spots are thought to play an important role in intraspecific communication.

The tiger's skull is similar to a lion's skull, with the frontal region usually less depressed or flattened, and a slightly longer postorbital region. The lion skull shows broader nasal openings. Due to the variation in skull sizes of the two species, the structure of the lower jaw is a reliable indicator for their identification. The tiger has fairly stout teeth; its somewhat curved canines are the longest among living felids with a crown height of up to 90 mm (3.5 in)

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Felis uncia was the scientific name used by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber in 1777 who described a snow leopard based on an earlier description by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, assuming that the cat occurred along the Barbary Coast, in Persia, East India and China. The genus name Uncia was proposed by John Edward Gray in 1854 for Asian cats with a long and thick tail. Felis irbis proposed by Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg in 1830 was a skin of a female snow leopard collected in the Altai Mountains. He also clarified that several leopard (P. pardus) skins were previously misidentified as snow leopard skins. Felis uncioides proposed by Thomas Horsfield in 1855 was a snow leopard skin from Nepal in the collection of the Museum of the East India Company.

Uncia uncia was used by Reginald Innes Pocock in 1930 when he reviewed skins and skulls of Panthera species from Asia. He also described morphological differences between snow leopard and leopard skins.Panthera baikalensis-romanii proposed by a Russian scientist in 2000 was a dark brown snow leopard skin from the Petrovsk-Zabaykalsky District in southern Transbaikal.

The snow leopard was long classified in the monotypic genus Uncia. It was subordinated to the genus Panthera based on results of phylogenetic studies.

Until spring 2017, there was no evidence available for the recognition of subspecies. Results of a phylogeographic analysis indicate that three subspecies should be recognised:

P. u. uncia in the range countries of the Pamir Mountains
P. u. irbis in Mongolia, and
P. u. uncioides in the Himalayas and Qinghai.
This view has been both contested and supported by different researchers

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Following Linnaeus's first descriptions of the species, several tiger specimens were described and proposed as subspecies. The validity of several tiger subspecies was questioned in 1999. Most putative subspecies described in the 19th and 20th centuries were distinguished on basis of fur length and colouration, striping patterns and body size, hence characteristics that vary widely within populations. Morphologically, tigers from different regions vary little, and gene flow between populations in those regions is considered to have been possible during the Pleistocene. Therefore, it was proposed to recognize only two tiger subspecies as valid, namely P. t. tigris in mainland Asia, and P. t. sondaica in the Greater Sunda Islands.

Results of craniological analysis of 111 tiger skulls from Southeast Asian range countries indicate that Sumatran tiger skulls differ from Indochinese and Javan tiger skulls, whereas Bali tiger skulls are similar in size to Javan tiger skulls. The authors proposed to classify the Sumatran and Javan tigers as distinct species, P. sumatrae and P. sondaica, with the Bali tiger as subspecies P. sondaica balica.

In 2015, morphological, ecological, and molecular traits of all putative tiger subspecies were analysed in a combined approach. Results support distinction of the two evolutionary groups continental and Sunda tigers. The authors proposed recognition of only two subspecies, namely P. t. tigris comprising the Bengal, Malayan, Indochinese, South Chinese, Siberian and Caspian tiger populations, and P. t. sondaica comprising the Javan, Bali and Sumatran tiger populations. The authors also noted that this reclassification will affect tiger conservation management. The nominate subspecies P. t. tigris constitutes two clades:

a northern clade composed of the Siberian and Caspian tiger populations
a southern clade composed of all other mainland populations.
One conservation specialist welcomed this proposal as it would make captive breeding programmes and future rewilding of zoo-born tigers easier. One geneticist was sceptical of this study and maintained that the currently recognised nine subspecies can be distinguished genetically.

In 2017, the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group revised felid taxonomy and recognized the tiger populations in continental Asia as P. t. tigris, and those in the Sunda Islands as P. t. sondaica. This two-subspecies view has been largely rejected by researchers. Results of a 2018 whole-genome sequencing of 32 specimens support six monophyletic tiger clades corresponding with the living subspecies and indicate that the most recent common ancestor lived about 110,000 years ago. The following tables are based on the classification of the species Panthera tigris provided in Mammal Species of the World. It also reflects the classification used by the Cat Classification Task Force in 2017

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The Himalayan monal (Lophophorus impejanus) is a bird. Monals are quite cute and colorful birds and have a sweet way to communicate. Like other birds, monals have a lifespan of 12 years.
Himalayan monals (Lophophorus impejanus) are very vocal birds. They use a number of calls to communicate with the other Himalayan monals around them. Besides the vocals, they use gestures specifically to impress their mates. The males bob their crest and fan their feathers to show off their beauty to the females.

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