The Panthera Cat Advisory Council harnesses the thinking, experience, and charisma of some of the best minds in the field of cat conservation today in order to help steer Panthera’s initiatives. The Advisory Council is chaired by Dr. George Schaller, Vice President of Panthera, with Dr. Alan Rabinowitz, Panthera President and CEO, and Dr. Luke Hunter, Panthera Executive Director, as Co-Chairs. Throughout the year, individuals from the council are asked to evaluate proposals and assess the most urgent priorities for cat conservation. Each year a meeting of the advisors is held to review and critique Panthera’s progress, brainstorm new ideas, and develop initiatives for the coming year. The council is a yearly appointment and each year, new members will be nominated.

Urs and Christine both received their PhD in Zoology from the University of Berne, Switzerland. Urs started to work on the re-introduced populations of Eurasian lynx already for his MSc, while Christine worked on the impact of river regulation on riverine birds in the Alps. Since the late 1980s they have both been involved in carnivore conservation work in Switzerland and Europe. For better coordination of carnivore conservation activities, they founded the non-profit organization KORA (Coordinated research projects for the conservation and management of carnivores in Switzerland). Urs is also a founding member of the Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe, now a SSC Working Group. Besides leading the KORA, Urs has today a position as an assistant professor at the veterinary faculty, where he has been involved in rabies and is teaching epidemiology. Christine has specialized in conservation genetics and is conducting a project on the impact of the bottleneck on the population genetics of reintroduced lynx populations in Europe. They chair the IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group since 2001. In the past years, they have developed a series of tools for better communication and capacity development: a website (www.catsg.org) presenting a lot of information on the 37 cat species, the Digital Cat Library - a unique online resource of over 6,000 documents on cat conservation, they turned the newsletter Cat News into an attractive cat conservation magazine (www.catsg.org/catnews), and produced a series of species KIMS (Knowledge and Information Management System) that are available through the website. One of the big challenges of the Cat Specialist Group is the recovery of the Iberian lynx, the only cat species listed as Critically Endangered. The remaining two populations are very small and have no connection. In recent years, Urs and Christine have been involved in strategic conservation planning for several cat species in Europe, Africa and Asia. They have initiated several projects with a strong component of local capacity development in different parts of the world. The Cat SG unites today 210 cat specialists from 57 countries. The IUCN/SSC Red List of Threatened Species provides a framework for the assessment of the status and conservation needs of the species. But how can we know what we know and that we do the right things? Only a tiny fraction of the free-living cats is monitored according to standardized methods, and many species have never been studied at all. The published scientific record alone is too incomplete for a sensible surveillance of the wild cats. The Cat Specialist Group is working towards a more comprehensive assessment of the status of the wild cats and consequently the better identification of conservation needs and the more effective implementation of conservation actions. The Cat SG is the only institution working worldwide for the sake of the cats, which unites scientists and researchers, officers of governmental agencies, and representatives of non-governmental conservation organizations. It is therefore the appropriate body to develop standards and concepts for the surveillance, conservation, and long-term maintenance of the wild cats.
www.catsg.org

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Despite his name, Peter is Brazilian, born in the state of São Paulo and raised partly there and partly in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, to where he moved at age 14, when his father was invited to manage a sheep/cattle ranch. His name is derived from British grandparents. He graduated in Biology at the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos - UNISINOS, in São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul, in 1977. Immediately thereafter, he was hired as the Brazilian counterpart in a project started by Dr. George Schaller, which provided pioneering information on the jaguar, puma, and some of their main prey species. He worked in this project in three different locations in the Pantanal of Mato Grosso, from January 1978 to February 1984, being joined by Howard Quigley. In 1985, he was awarded a scholarship from the National Research Council (CNPq), from the Brazilian Federal Government, and went to the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA, where he concluded his MSc. in 1987 and his PhD in 1995. In 1990, he returned to Brazil for his doctoral research comparing ocelots and jaguars in the subtropical forest of Iguaçu National Park. In 1993, he was awarded the Erpf Field Award, by WWF-US, for his work on neotropical felids. In 1994, he created the National Predator Center, within the Brazilian Institute for the Environment – IBAMA. He acted as director of the center until 2001, when he returned to field research on a project studying puma biology and conservation in southern Brazil. In 2006, he returned for further jaguar research in the Pantanal and has recently moved back to Iguaçu National Park, again to coordinate a jaguar study there, once again. During the course of his many projects, he has helped train a long list of students, many of which have proceeded in their own projects and organizations on Brazilian carnivores.

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Laurence Frank has a BA from Reed College, an MSc. from the University of Aberdeen, and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He has been a research associate at Berkeley since 1984, first as part of the Berkeley Hyena Project and currently in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. After spending twenty years studying the behavioral ecology and behavioral endocrinology of the spotted hyena, he turned to conservation research and joined the Wildlife Conservation Society ten years ago. Dr. Frank directs the Living with Lions program (the Laikipia Predator Project and the Kilimanjaro Lion Conservation Project), multidisciplinary approaches to the conservation biology and management of large African predators outside protected areas.
www.lionconservation.org

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Rafael Hoogesteijn was born in Caracas, and studied in the Colegio La Salle La Colina and in 1978 he received his degree as Médico Veterinario at the Faculty of Veterinary Sciences. Whilst at Central University, Maracay also spent time engaging in Statistics, Genetics and Cattle Breeding and his time there saw him leaving with a Special Graduation Award for the highest qualifications of his class. From 1978, he worked at the Caricuao Zoological Park as Veterinarian, Zoologist and Director in Charge. He then went on to practice independently with the Venezuelan Center for Artificial Insemination and in the early 1980’s he worked as the coordinator for several research projects that were developed in beef cattle ranches, located in flooded savanna. In 1996 Hoogesteijn obtained a Master of Sciences degree in the Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Department of the University of Florida and the title of his thesis was: “Body mass and skull measurements in four jaguar populations and observations on their preybase”, this was supervised by Drs. Mel Sunquist and John Eisenberg. Hoogesteijn has been a member of the Cat Specialist Group of IUCN since 1986, and he has participated and published the results of many different studies in National and International Congresses, Workshops and Scientific Meetings in relationship to beef cattle and water buffalo breeding in tropical and flooded savanna conditions; through this work he has also developing strategies to reduce feline predation problems in ranches located in those areas. Alongside his versatile past, Hoogesteijn is also an acclaimed wildlife photographer; his work has appeared in numerous books and magazines. Since early 2008 he has begun working with the Panthera Foundation as Cattle Manager and Liaison between jaguar researchers and ranches administrators in two beef cattle ranches, devoted to wildlife conservation in the Northern Pantanal of Brazil.

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Maurice Hornocker is best known for his research on the world’s big cats. In his 40-year career, he and his colleagues have conducted pioneering research in North America on cougar, lynx, bobcat, and ocelot, on leopards in Africa and Far-Eastern Asia, jaguars in Central and South America, and tigers in Siberia. He has also done ground-breaking research on other carnivores in North America – bears, wolverines, river otters, and badgers. Dr. Hornocker has published over 100 scientific papers and many popular articles intended to communicate his scientific findings to the public. He has made several documentary films of his work and has published books on a number of his research projects. Throughout his career, he has photographed his research subjects and has utilized photographs as educational tools in the cause of conservation. His photographs of wildlife have been published throughout the world in many different publication and books. Dr. Hornocker is Director of the Selway Institute, a non-profit research and education organization he founded in 2000.
www.uihome.uidaho.edu/default.aspx?pid=42866

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Inspired by the work of Dr. George Schaller, India-born Dr. K. Ullas Karanth (59) decided to become a wildlife biologist. He obtained a Masters degree Wildlife Ecology from the University of Florida, USA in 1988 and his Doctorate in Applied Zoology from Mangalore University in 1993. Dr Karanth is currently a Senior Conservation Scientist with the New York based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which he joined in 1988. Dr. Karanth directs WCS India Program and is also the Technical Director of WCS-Panthera “Tigers Forever” Program. Karanth has conducted extensive long-term research on ecology of tigers, other predators and their prey in Nagarahole Park in India. He has studied predator-prey population ecology in the Indian wildlife reserves of Pench, Kanha, Kaziranga Namdapha, Sundarbans, Ranthambore, Melghat, Tadoba, Kudremukh, Bhadra and Bandipur. His special areas of expertise include radiotelemetry, camera trapping and line transect surveys and mitigation of human-wildlife conflicts. He has traveled widely to provide his expertise to other research projects in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Dr. Karanth’s findings have been published in major scientific journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, Ecology, Journal of Animal Ecology, Journal of Zoology, Journal of Tropical Ecology, Conservation Biology and Biological Conservation. Dr. Karanth is a scientific fellow of the Zoological Society of London and serves on the editorial board of the journals Oryx and Journal of Applied Ecology. He also serves on the IUCN/SSC specialist groups on Cats, Elephants, Wild Cattle and Small Carnivores. He is the prime mover in a WCS funded multi-institutional initiative to establish a graduate level academic program in Wildlife Biology and Conservation at Bangalore in collaboration with Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Dr. Karanth has also been active in the conservation arena and serves as the Scientific Advisor to several conservation advocacy groups in India. He is a member of the Forest Advisory Committee of Government of India. His work has been extensively featured in world’s media including Nature, New York Times, Time Magazine, National Geographic, BBC, CNN, Discovery etc. In recognition of his contribution to global wildlife conservation work, Dr. Karanth won the Sierra Club’s prestigious international EarthCare award in 2006, and, World Wildlife Funds’s Paul Getty award as well as the Sanctuary lifetime achievement awards in 20007. Dr. Ullas Karanth was elected a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy in 2008.
www.wcsindia.org

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David Macdonald is Director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford University. Professor Macdonald conceived, and implemented, the appeal which led to the foundation in 1986 of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, and the associated Senior Research Fellowship at Lady Margaret Hall; this was the first Fellowship in any British university dedicated to biological conservation, and the WildCRU became the first such research unit. Its aim is to undertake original research on aspects of fundamental biology relevant to solving practical problems of wildlife conservation and environmental management, and thus to underpin policy formation and public debate of the many issues that surround the conservation of wildlife and its habitats. Professor Macdonald’s research interests range broadly across diverse topics in wildlife conservation and management, both in the UK and around the world. Nonetheless, from his early work on red foxes, he has retained an emphasis on Carnivores in particular and mammals in general. He has worked on meerkats in the Kalahari, mink in Belarus, capybaras in Venezuela, crab-eating foxes in Brazil, proboscis monkeys in Borneo, jackals in Israel, amongst others, and studied creatures in the UK ranging from badgers to wood mice! Arising from these varied interests, Professor Macdonald has published over 300 papers in refereed international journals, and written or edited more than a dozen books – of which the most recent: Key Topics in Conservation Biology (published by Blackwells in 2006) explains a lot about the WildCRU’s priorities. Professor Macdonald is committed to reaching out to the wider public; in addition to writing and film-making, in the last 5 years he has, for instance, published 7 book-sized technical reports on behalf of government or NGOs, helped create a volunteer training scheme (part of which trains rehabilitated addicts in mammal monitoring), created a successful, funded internship training scheme, a business and biodiversity programme involving workshops and publications and helped create a tribal theatre group that has performed conservation dramas to 2,500 Zimbabwean village children. For 25 years he was the founding Chairman of the IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group. Professor Macdonald is very proud to have been the A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University, a Visiting Professor at Imperial College, an Emeritus Fellow of the IUCN’s Survival Service Commission and, in 2005, to have won the Dawkins Prize for Conservation and Animal Welfare. In 2006 he was awarded the American Society of Mammalogists' Merriam Prize for research in mammalogy, and in 2007 The Mammal Society of Great Britain's equivalent medal. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in March 2008.
www.wildcru.org

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As Founder and Director for the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) since 1990, Laurie Marker pioneered new ideas in cheetah conservation, and has formed cooperative alliances on behalf of the cheetah that had never before been possible. She is recognized around the world as one of the leading experts on cheetahs, both in the wild and in captivity, and began her in-situ research in Namibia, Africa in 1977 where she conducted ground breaking research on re-introduction of captive born cheetahs back into the wild. It was at this time that she learned about the conflict between livestock farmers and cheetahs. Early collaborative research in 1982 resulted in identifying the limited genetic makeup of the cheetah. Based in Namibia since 1991, Dr. Marker has led a conservation program from humble beginnings in a tiny farmhouse in rural Namibia to an unparalleled conservation model for predator conservation. In the early days, with no one to learn from or lean on, she broke new ground with every new program and effort. Dr. Marker has contributed vital information on cheetah health, reproduction, mortality, evolution, and genetics from her biomedical work on every cheetah that passes through CCF’s hands (over 800). Her efforts to unite a nation, a continent and the world in the effort to save the cheetah are impressive. Through education and collaboration with local farmers and landowners, conservancies have been formed to provide thousands of contiguous acres of land where cheetahs can roam safely, Dr. Marker chairs the Conservancy Association of Namibia. She learned that with improved livestock and wildlife management techniques, cheetah, people and livestock can peacefully co-exist. In addition to many international awards for her work in Cheetah Conservation, in 2000 she was recognized as one of the Time Magazine Hero’s for the Planet. In 2002 she completed her PhD in Zoology at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and has published over 45 scientific publications and has been written up in a couple hundred popular press articles. She has been a member of the World Conservation Unions (IUCN) Species Survival Commission’s Cat Specialist Group since 1988, was the vice-chair from 1992 to 2001 and currently serves as one of their core members. Today, Dr. Dr. Marker has assisted in developing cheetah conservation programs in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Iran and as well as supporting a field research base in Kenya. This understanding is the only way that cheetahs will survive.
www.cheetah.org

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As Panthera’s Director of Snow Leopard Programs, Tom McCarthy began his professional career studying brown bear, black bear, mountain goats and caribou in Alaska in the early 1980s. A strong interest in international conservation led him to Mongolia in 1992, where he took over management of a long-term snow leopard research project under the guidance of Dr. George Schaller. The 6-year study was the basis for his Ph.D. (University of Massachusetts-Amherst) and he became the first to use satellite radio-collars on the cats. In addition to snow leopards he conducted ground-breaking studies of wild camels and Gobi brown bears, two of Mongolia’s rarest animals. After a short stint in the Caribbean helping the island nation of Anguilla develop a protected area system, Dr. McCarthy became the Science and Conservation Director of the Snow Leopard Trust in 2000 and has since led their extensive science and community-based conservation programs across much of snow leopard range in Asia. He has helped establish projects in Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and Pakistan. His personal efforts have catalyzed national conservation plans for snow leopards in Mongolia and Pakistan, and he has contributed to similar efforts in Bhutan, India and Uzbekistan. Dr. McCarthy also serves as Executive Director of the Snow Leopard Network, a global consortium of more than 200 professionals involved in snow leopard research and conservation. Highlights of his recent work include development of genetic methods for monitoring wild snow leopard populations, and the initiation of a new generation of snow leopard research in Pakistan (2006) using state-of-the-art satellite GPS collars. Recently, Dr. McCarthy and Schaller again selected Mongolia as the site for snow leopard research and launched the first ever long-term intensive study of the endangered cats. This program, a collaborative program between Panthera and the Snow Leopard Trust, will provide unprecedented scientific information necessary for effective conservation of snow leopards range wide.
www.snowleopard.org

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Gus Mills spent 34 years conducting research on African large carnivores with SANParks stationed in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and the Kruger National Park. His initial work was on brown hyenas and spotted hyenas in the Southern Kalahari culminating in the publication of his book in 1990 “Kalahari hyenas: the comparative behavioural ecology of two species.” He studied lion and cheetah feeding ecology, ecological relationships between the large carnivores and wild dog population ecology in Kruger National Park. His study on wild dogs in Kruger ran for 15 years. He has supervised a number of PhD and MSc theses on lions, cheetahs, wild dogs, brown hyenas, honey badgers and African wild cats in different areas of Southern Africa. He was the founder of the South African Wild Dog Advisory Group, which is a broad based committee of interested and affected parties at both government and the private sector levels, whose aim is to improve the conservation status of this endangered species in South Africa. He has written four books and published over 120 scientific papers, as well as delivered over 80 talks at conferences and symposia worldwide. He is an Extraordinary Professor at Pretoria University, a senior member of several IUCN Carnivore Specialist Groups, including Chair of the Hyena Specialist Group, and member of the steering committee of the Cat Specialist Group, founder and past head of the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Carnivore Conservation Group and serves as a member on several boards of scientific journals and conservation organizations. He has consulted widely on carnivore conservation issues in Africa and Asia. Recently retired from SANParks he is now a Research Fellow with The Tony and Lisette Lewis Foundation and in June 2006 started a five year cheetah study together with his wife Margie in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.

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Dale Miquelle has been leading research and conservation efforts on the Amur tiger and Far Eastern leopard since 1992. Working first for the Hornocker Wildlife Institute, and then as Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Russia Program, Miquelle has overseen the longest running field research project on tigers ever conducted, and has been a principal voice in conserving wild felids of the region. Miquelle has led range-wide surveys in Russia, and the first comprehensive surveys of tigers in Northeast China. He assisted in the creation of new protected areas in both China and Russia, and has provided a vision for recovery of tigers across Northeast Asia. Efforts to understand the status and ecology of the Far Eastern leopard, and to conserve this highly endangered population, has been a second, but no less important focus of his efforts over the past 12 years. More recently his efforts have focused on developing the next generation of felid conservationists in the region by creating the Sikhote-Alin Research Center and developing an internationally recognized research and training program that engages an international cadre of students.
www.wcs.org/Russia

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Craig Packer was born in Texas and received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University in 1972. While still at Stanford, Dr. Packer went to Tanzania to study baboons with Jane Goodall at the Gombe Stream Research Centre. He then went to the University of Sussex to complete his PhD research on the Gombe baboons. After a study of Japanese macaques in Hakusan National Park, Dr. Packer returned to Tanzania in 1978 to head the Serengeti lion project. He subsequently held a post-doc at the University of Chicago and joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota in 1984, returning to the Serengeti for several months each year. Dr. Packer received a J.S. Guggenheim Fellowship in 1990 and became a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in 1997. He is the author of "Into Africa," which won the 1995 John Burroughs medal, and 83 scientific articles 55 of which concern his research on lions. His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, the National Geographic Society and the Disney Foundation. After all these years, he still finds lions fascinating and feels that they lead the most interesting lives of almost any animal.
www.lionresearch.org

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Howard Quigley is the Director of Western Hemisphere Programs at Panthera, focusing on jaguars and cougars. He obtained his bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley, his master’s degree from the University of Tennessee, and his doctorate from the University of Idaho. He worked as an assistant professor in the University of Maryland system (Frostburg State) before returning to Idaho to become President of the Hornocker Wildlife Institute at the University of Idaho. After the Hornocker Institute merged with the Wildlife Conservation Society, he directed the WCS Global Carnivore Program until 2002. His work with carnivores has included field studies of cougars in central Idaho, giant pandas in China, jaguars in the Brazilian Pantanal, and Siberian tigers in the Russian Far East. His current cougar field project, the Teton Cougar Project, in the southern Yellowstone ecosystem, focuses on predator-prey interactions, cougar population dynamics, and cougar interactions with other large carnivores. In this latter aspect of the work, he coordinates a combined effort with other scientists to examine the interactions of wolves, grizzly bears, cougars, and black bears. This information will be used to improve our understanding of carnivore “guilds” and to inform and develop long-term conservation and management plans for large carnivores. In his current work with Panthera, Howard is also conducting a review and evaluation of cougar science and conservation efforts in the state of California. He is a member of the I.U.C.N. Cat Specialist Group and consults on a variety of carnivore issues, including jaguar recovery in the U.S., cougar-human interactions, and jaguar-rancher conflicts in Latin America. Dr. Quigley serves on graduate committees at five universities and has assisted in the completion of more than twenty graduate students through his graduate committee activities. He is the author of more than thirty scientific publications and popular articles.

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As a conservation biologist and head of the Conservation Ecology Center at the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park, Dr. Seidensticker's research efforts have focused on understanding and encouraging landscape patterns and conditions where large mammals can persist, training future conservation leaders, and diffusing environmental understanding. He is chairman of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Save The Tiger Fund Council. He pioneered the use of radio telemetry to study the puma in North America. He was co-leader of the team that captured and radio-tracked the first wild tigers in Nepal. He has conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka. Dr. John Seidensticker is an author or editor of more than 190 articles, management plans, and books including The Javan Tiger and the Meru-Betiri Reserve: A Plan for Management; Sundarbans Wildlife Management Plan: Conservation in the Bangladesh Coastal Zone; Saving the Tiger, Smithsonian Book of Giant Pandas; Giant Pandas, Great Cats; Dangerous Animals; Tigers; Cats and Wild Cat: Cats: Smithsonian Answer Book; Smithsonian Q&A The Ultimate Question and Answer Book: Cats; Predators; and co-edited Riding the Tiger: Tiger Conservation in Human-dominated Landscapes.
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/AboutUs/Staff/BiosAndProfiles/SeidenstickerJohn.cfm

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Mel Sunquist is a Professor in the Department of Wildlife Ecology & Conservation at the University of Florida. He is best known for his pioneering studies of tigers and leopards in Nepal, India, Peninsular Malaysia and Laos. For his long-term involvement in Indian conservation efforts, in 1997 the US Fish & Wildlife Service, Office of International Conservation, recognized Dr. Sunquist for “Exceptional Collaboration to the Conservation and Management of Natural Resources.”  With his graduate students he has also worked on jaguars, pumas and ocelots in South America, forest carnivores in the Central African Republic, cheetahs in Kenya, and other less-known cats, including leopard cats on Borneo and the kodkod in Chile. In Florida his research focuses on black bears, bobcats, foxes and coyotes.  His 2002 book Wild Cats of the World (Univ. Chicago Press), co-authored with his wife, Fiona, provided not only a synthesis of the state-of-the-knowledge of the world’s cats but also highlighted how vulnerable these species are, and how tenuous their future.  Dr. Sunquist serves on Exxon/Mobil’s Save-The-Tiger Fund Council, the Advisory Board of Brazil’s National Center of Research and Conservation of Natural Predators, as a member of the “Core Group” of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group, and nationally as a member of the Florida Panther Recovery Team.

www.wec.ufl.edu/faculty/sunquistm

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