how would a loss of the snow leopard affect their habitat?

Answer 1

As other people have said, it will directly affect their prey. But it goes much deeper than this. When the prey becomes overrun, it then affects *their* prey and sources of food. If the snow leopard doesn't eat the rabbits, then the rabbits eat more vegetation. This can strip an area clean, leading to soil erosion. The rabbits will also multiply more and as the food becomes less available, their habitat will spread, possibly into areas that didn't have a rabbit problem before. They may invade farmland and gardens in higher numbers, leading to a lesser harvest. This means tha thte humans will have less food to nourish them, meaning that there could be a starvation cycle.

If the rabbits are unable to find food, then they will eventually start to die off. Large amounts of dead animals are not good for an ecosystem as dead bodies attract disease and unwanted pests. Dead bodies will attract 'decomposers', who may have a population boom, and may then invade human households looking for food once the rabbit population has normalized. A boom in scavengers will also take place meaning that as the rabbit population normalizes, they will start to die off, leaving more carcasses.

While this may not happen with the loss of a single snow leopard, the loss of a species ALWAYS has reprecussions that most humans don't care about because they are too short sighted. It is NOT natural evolution or extinction - it's extinction usually brought on by humans, which will eventually affect them in ways that they never dreamed.

Answer 2

Snow leopards prey on smaller animals and have no predators other than humans. Extinction would cause their habitats to become more populated with smaller mammals they eat, possibly leading to over-population of birds, rabbits, mice, rats and other critters.

Answer 3

The simple answer is that when you lose an apex predator like a leopard, the prey animals it eats will multiply in numbers uncontrolled until resources can no longer sustain the population and then the population of prey animals will crash.

Answer 4

the animal that was its prey would soon become more populated which would mean that more food would be needed and then since there wasn't enough to support them they'd all die .....in simpler words it would lead to the decay of the ecosystem