The icy peaks of Jargalant Mountain are supposed to belong to snow leopards, whose numbers have dwindled to fewer than 1,000 in Mongolia, but hard-pressed herders are increasingly pushing into the vulnerable animals' traditional habitat. "Now there are eight herders' families on this mountain," said Daribazar Nergui, who has lost 10 of his livestock to the elusive apex predators, known as "ghosts of the mountain". Wild animals and domesticated livestock have long coexisted in Mongolia's vast hinterlands. But a push for more grazable land by herders seeking to expand their flocks and their earnings has brought them onto lands once reserved for wild animals, leaving them vulnerable to disease and starvation. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES