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The Snowleopard (Uncia Uncia) and Bluesheep (Pseudois nayaur) are least studied species and inhabited in remote area at higher altitude with extreme harsh geography and climatic condition, which are inaccessible tracts of western Himalayan region, India. It’s very difficult to estimate the distribution and their density, which play crucial role in conservation and management strategies of these species. MaxEnt, habitat suitability model is one of the well suited and widely used model for assessment of these remotely inhabited species. In this study, occurrence data, bioclimatic variables and abiotic variables such as Slope, Aspect, hill shade, NDSI, NDVI, LULC and LST were used for assessing the habitat suitability of snow leopard and Blue sheep in western Himalayan region India. It’s found that area which has high suitability, having altitude range between 2618m-5031meter, above sea level and this altitudinal range also exhibit in Blue sheep habitat suitability. In terms variables contribution; annual mean temperature (Bio1) and Precipitation seasonality (Bio15) and slope are major influencing variable, which are contributing 50.7%, 24.8% and 9.6% respectively in habitat suitability of blue sheep. While of coldest month’s minimum temperature which is “Bio6”, “Precipitation of driest month or precipitation of driest quarter" which is Bio 17 and wettest month precipitation (Bio 13) are three major influencing variable of snow leopard habitat suitability, which are contributing 25.9%, 21.45 and 12.2% respectively. The ROC value of habitat suitability of snow leopard model is 0.87 and its 0.82 for blue sheep, which shows that models are under good representation. Model shows that only 4.7% area which is 96.8621.83 km2 is highly suitable and 61.5% (12615442.42 km2) area is unsuitable for snow leopard. While 7.3 %( 1511121.71km2) are is highly suitable for blue sheep and 53.3% (10943128.32 km2) are unsuitable for blue sheep. From model assessment it’s found that 19.93% area of high suitability are matched from each other for both species which mean this area is highly suitable for both species and 91.20 % area of unsuitable class of both species are overlapping on each other which representing that this area is unsuitable for snow leopard and Blue sheep as well.
Key words: Habitat suitability, MaxEnt, Snow leopard (Uncia Uncia), Blue sheep (Pseudois nayaur), Bioclimatic variables
