The snow leopard is listed in the Red Book as an endangered species. It is a rare, graceful, yet extremely elusive animal that inhabits mountains at altitudes of up to 6,000 meters. In Kazakhstan, only about 190 individuals remain, and their survival is threatened by poachers, climate change, and human activity. This makes the preservation and growth of their population one of the most pressing environmental challenges. To protect snow leopards, they must be studied closely: understanding how they live, how many remain, where they roam, whether they have enough food, and whether they are reproducing. To study snow leopards, scientists use camera traps, around 500 are deployed across the country. These devices capture thousands of images, but until recently researchers had to spend weeks manually reviewing the photos to make sense of the data. In a field where time is critical, this approach was simply insufficient. At that point, there was no convenient or efficient technological solution that could quickly analyze the images and allow for a rapid response to threats. Yandex Qazaqstan is actively developing a local technology ecosystem, including Yandex Cloud, with a focus on business, science, and the public sector. The snow leopard monitoring project, implemented for the Snow Leopard Monitoring Center at the Zoological Institute of Kazakhstan, became part of the company’s strategy to support national priorities, biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Against the backdrop of a growing cloud technology market in Kazakhstan and the strengthening presence of international IT companies, most solutions remain focused on the digitalization of business and government. Our project demonstrated how AI and cloud technologies can go beyond these boundaries, delivering tangible benefits to science and the environment. Kazakhstan has many organizations and initiatives working on socially significant projects, particularly in ecology. These are most often driven by state and public institutions, but in today’s world enthusiasm alone is not enough to protect nature, what we also need is modern technology.
Problem
Problem and Challenge The snow leopard is a symbol of Kazakhstan and one of the rarest predators on the planet. Only about 190 individuals remain in the country, and each passing day is a fight for their survival. Poaching, climate change, and habitat loss are pushing the species to the brink of extinction. To save them, it is not enough to simply protect their territories, it is crucial to understand how they live: where they hunt, raise their cubs, and find shelter. Camera traps are the only way to observe snow leopards, but hundreds of thousands of images turn monitoring into exhausting work, costing researchers weeks of effort. This process leaves no room for rapid response or effective action. Our project helped to overcome this barrier. In Kazakhstan, NGOs are working to protect snow leopards, but they often face a lack of technological resources. To date, no major cloud providers in the country have integrated AI and cloud technologies into local ecological initiatives. The key challenge is to accelerate the snow leopard monitoring process (speeding up data processing, improving recognition accuracy, and freeing up valuable time for scientists). Goals: 1. Social Goals • Social Impact: Provide the scientific community with a technological solution that can help address a range of environmental challenges. • Social Impact: Contribute to the preservation of the snow leopard as a unique species and a national symbol of Kazakhstan. • Social Outcome: Engage students, researchers, and local communities in developing technologies to protect the environment. 2. Business Goals • Social Impact: Build long-term partnerships (with businesses, government institutions, NGOs) for collaborative work. 3. Marketing Goals • Social Outcome: Promote the use of advanced technologies for nature conservation, strengthening the brand’s image as socially responsible. 4. Media Goals • Social Output: Implement a communications strategy reaching Kazakhstan’s key media outlets. • Draw audience attention through creative formats.
Solution
To ensure the project’s visibility and impact, we adopted a strategy that combined classical PR tools with creative formats. This approach allowed us to engage different target audiences and make snow leopard conservation part of the public agenda. Communication Strategy: • Raise awareness and engage the target audience through classical PR tools. • Involve the audience through creative, interactive formats. • Distribute knowledge about the project across the Yandex Qazaqstan ecosystem and through partners. Media Support The project received extensive coverage in Kazakhstan’s leading media and social networks. This helped draw attention to the protection of snow leopards and highlighted the importance of technology in environmental conservation. Yandex Scale Kazakhstan The project was showcased at the Yandex Scale business conference, underlining the technological value of the neural network and its practical application in ESG agendas for the corporate sector. Influencer Collaboration Actor Askar Ilyasov became the face of the project, amplifying its emotional resonance and attracting attention to the problem of preserving endangered species. Special Project with Tengrinews A dedicated landing page was created on Kazakhstan’s largest media outlet, Tengrinews, expanding audience reach and providing a deeper understanding of the project’s purpose and significance. Interactive Experience at IQ BBQ At the IQ BBQ festival, visitors participated in a game where they had to identify the same snow leopard across different images on touch panels. The activity demonstrated how the neural network could recognize leopards quickly and accurately in contrast to the human eye.
Result
1. Social Goals • Social Impact: Provide the scientific community with a technological solution to address a range of environmental challenges: o A neural network capable of reviewing up to 8 million photos in just one hour and identifying individual animals. o The technology can also be applied to studying other wildlife, as well as soil, air, and water quality. • Social Impact: Contribute to the preservation of the snow leopard as a unique species and national symbol of Kazakhstan: o During the project, a previously unknown population of 20 snow leopards was discovered in the Altyn-Emel National Park (a significant finding, given only about 190 individuals are known to exist across Kazakhstan). • Social Outcome: Engage students, scientists, and local communities in developing technologies for environmental protection: o Students of KBTU gained mentorship from Yandex Cloud, access to the company’s know-how, and hands-on experience working with neural networks. o Zoologists from the Snow Leopard Monitoring Center at the Zoological Institute of Kazakhstan actively participated in the project. 2. Business Goals • Social Impact: Build long-term partnerships with businesses, government, and NGOs for collaboration: o As a result of the project, we received 25+ partnership requests from organizations with an ESG focus. 3. Marketing Goals • Social Outcome: Promote the use of advanced technologies for nature conservation while strengthening the brand’s socially responsible image: o The campaign reached a total audience of 61.9 million people across all platforms where the project was featured (based on SimilarWeb data), plus 6,400 offline participants (6,000 at IQ BBQ and 400 at Yandex Scale). o Achieved 100% positive brand mentions. 4. Media Goals • Social Output: Implement a communications strategy covering Kazakhstan’s key media outlets: o Secured 65 publications across media and social networks. o Delivered a keynote presentation at Yandex Scale Kazakhstan. • Draw audience attention through creative formats: o Collaboration with actor Askar Ilyasov, eco-activist and advocate for snow leopard protection in Kazakhstan. o Special project launched on Tengrinews, one of the country’s leading media platforms. o Interactive stands at the IQ BBQ science and music festival in Almaty, showcasing how the neural network recognizes leopards faster and more accurately than the human eye. Significance of Results For the Brand and Business The project demonstrated how Yandex Qazaqstan - leveraging the technologies and expertise of Yandex Cloud can address not only business challenges, but also social and environmental ones. It strengthened the company’s reputation as a local technology partner, expanded its presence in the research community, enhanced its image among diverse stakeholder groups including government authorities, and opened new opportunities for collaboration. Key Effects: • Highlighted Yandex Qazaqstan’s expertise in AI and data analysis. • Strengthened trust among government institutions and scientific organizations. • Created a long-term PR effect, increasing brand visibility within the ESG agenda. For Solving the Environmental Challenge The primary goal was to accelerate snow leopard monitoring (speeding up data processing, improving recognition accuracy, and freeing up researchers’ time.) With the help of the neural network: • A previously unknown population of 20 snow leopards was identified, refining population data. • Analysis time was reduced from weeks to hours — the neural network can process up to 8 million images per hour. • The platform is now scalable for monitoring other species and ecosystems. What Had the Greatest Impact? • AI and cloud technologies → An innovative tool for snow leopard monitoring, scalable to other conservation challenges. • Partnerships with KBTU and the Zoological Institute → Made advanced technology accessible to the scientific community. • A large-scale communications campaign → With an audience reach of 37.6 million, extensive media coverage, offline activities, and influencer involvement, the issue of snow leopard conservation was elevated to a national conversation. The project brought together technology, ecology, and communications in a unified solution that not only raised awareness about the decline of snow leopard populations, but also delivered a tangible tool to address the problem, one that can be scaled to other environmental challenges.
