Tuva holds an immense amount of treasures and mysteries. One of these treasures is irbis, the beautiful and mysterious snow leopard, to see whom is a rare fortune. However the officials of the republic are not at all concerned about the preservation of this red-book animal, and some would not even object to receiving the wonderful hide of the dead beauty as a present. And only thanks to the WWF is it possible to conduct work in Tuva for the purpose of protection of the snow leopard – there are about 100 of them here, which is about one half of their total number in Russia.