She might never explicitly claim that, but the page is clearly written in photojournalist style. A photo of snow leopard tracks with coordinates, talking about and documenting the process of her search and how she finally managed to snap a photo of the leopard.

Reading that page I certainly would think the images are unaltered (i.e. not stitched together).

That is not to say that the publications that took the photos were in the right. But the false impression is not entirely on them.