The Irbis Centre for Snow Leopard Research and Conservation and TASS news agency will collaborate in the fields of nature conservation, ecology, and the study of Russia’s rare animals. As part of this partnership, they will monitor a snow leopard under TASS’s care — a cat named Atass from the Altai Mountains.
The memorandum on information partnership was signed on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) by Andrey Kondrashov, Director General of TASS, and Ali Uzdenov, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Irbis Association.

“

It’s a great pleasure to sign an agreement with TASS, our most authoritative and respected news agency," said Ali Uzdenov. "In 2025, we conducted a snow leopard census across the Russian Federation for the first time and identified 87 snow leopards in Russia. Of these, 23 did not yet have names. TASS took the initiative and was the first to organize a naming contest. They selected one leopard, who was then named. So now we have 22 unnamed snow leopards left. TASS was the pioneer here.

Said Ali Uzdenov.

More than 150 name suggestions for the snow leopard were submitted to TASS’s contest from over 40 Russian cities. Following a public vote, the winning name was proposed by Ulyana Sergienko, a schoolgirl from Krasnoyarsk. According to her, the word "atas" is associated with drive and speed, and by adding an extra s, it becomes similar in sound to TASS.

“

Now TASS has its own snow leopard. It lives in the Altai Mountains, and from now on, this snow leopard is not just our ward but a true ‘TASS special correspondent in the wild'!" said Andrey Kondrashov. "We've even come up with a nickname for it. This important task was entrusted to schoolchildren — participants of the new youth media agency TASS Newm.

Said Andrey Kondrashov.

Snow leopard Atass lives in the Argut River basin and was first captured on camera trap footage in 2023.