New Delhi, Aug. 18 -- The snow leopard, one of the world's most elusive big cats, though hard to track, is silently not only surviving but thriving and is a resident population in Jammu and Kashmir all year round, according to findings of a new survey.

The existence of these "grey ghosts of the mountains" came to be known through anecdotal sightings in the remote mountains of the Himalayas, and there was no verifiable source to confirm their presence except for some fleeting footage captured by camera traps.

This proved to be a major challenge for researchers to estimate the population of these apex predators, which are a highly vulnerable species.

Now, a landmark camera trapping study conducted by the Nature Conservation Foundation (N...