In Nepal, the mountain we know as Everest is called Sagarmatha, meaning Mother of the Universe, and it, along with seven other Himalayan peaks taller than 23,000 feet, lies inside Sagarmatha National Park. This 480-square-mile preserve, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, is home to snow leopards, red pandas, Himalayan wolves and people. But, as always happens when human and animal interests compete, the animals lose, their estimated numbers dwindling in the wild. The most elusive of all Himalayan species, one that Sherpas steadfastly believe lives among them despite Western skepticism, is the yeti.

Snow Leopard

The snow leopard is adapted to living at high altitudes in bitter cold. Its dense gray, black and white fur camouflages well against snow, ice and rocks. And its tail is strikingly longer and thicker than that of an African leopard, used both for balance when climbing and as a kind of blanket that the snow leopard wraps around itself for protection against the cold. National Geographic estimates that only about 6,000 of these endangered cats are left in the wild; other estimates put the number even lower. One reason for the decline is human encroachment on its habitat but another is that snow leopards are hunted both for their fur and for their body parts, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine.

Red Panda

The Smithsonian's National Zoological Park estimates that only about 2,500 red pandas, deemed highly endangered by World Wildlife Fund Nepal, still exist in the wild. Also called red cat bears and lesser pandas, these animals are a little larger than domestic cats but with their long, fluffy striped tails and reddish brown fur, they look more like raccoons. Their food of preference is the same as giant pandas: bamboo. However, when bamboo forests are cleared to make room for human habitation, red pandas are forced to move on and, according to WWFN, often end up in areas where no laws exist to protect them. They are hunted for their fur and in some parts of India and Nepal, are trapped and sold as house pets.

Himalayan Wolf

In 2003 and 2006, genetic research aimed at tracing the family tree of the Himalayan wolf yielded surprising results. While North American and Eurasian wolves have a lineage going back about 150,000 years, the ancestors of the Himalayan wolf extend back in an unbroken line for 800,000 years. On the basis of this work, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species recognized a new species name, canis himalayensis, but other wildlife protection organizations still consider them a subspecies of Tibetan wolf. As wildlife researcher Priya Joshi wrote in an essay published in a Kathmandu newspaper, so little is known about this animal that is "near impossible" to develop an effective conservation program, and when wolves prey on livestock, herders shoot them. Since only a few hundred of these wolves are believed to exist in the wild, Joshi calls them "critically endangered."

Yeti?

In May 1953, New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay of Darjeeling, India, became the first two people to reach the summit of Mount Everest. In 1960, Hillary, by then "Sir Edmund," led a scientific expedition to research the effects of high altitudes on the human body. Another objective was to bring back evidence for or against the existence of the abominable snowman of the Himalayas. In return for promising to build a school in the Sherpa village of Khumjung, Hillary was allowed to borrow a precious relic that villagers believed to be a yeti scalp. A village elder, Khunjo Chumbi, accompanied Hillary to New York, Chicago, London and Paris, where comments from a skeptical professor drew this response from Chumbi: "In Nepal we have neither giraffes nor kangaroos so we know nothing about them. In France, there are no yetis so I sympathize with your ignorance."

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