KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
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SMALL CATS SYMPOSIUM KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Prof David Macdonald
David Macdonald CBE is Professor of Wildlife Conservation and the Founding Director of WildCRU
His Fellowship, held at Oxford University’s Lady Margaret Hall since 1986, was the first in any university dedicated to research in Biological Conservation. David is both an accomplished leader in conservation science and research and one of the most prominent international figures in raising public awareness of the importance of biodiversity, populating biology through his films and books.
He is well known for his work on cats, including lions, tigers, leopards and especially clouded leopards, although his research has spanned published studies on moths to penguins. Within the WildCRU, his teams have built bridges with some of the most remote communities in Africa, Asia and South America, and have formed conservation partnerships which benefit both the people and the wildlife with which they coexist. David has supervised more than 160 successful Oxford doctoral students and he created the Recanati-Kaplan Centre’s Postgraduate Diploma in International Wildlife Conservation Practice to train aspiring conservationists from less developed countries, receiving the Queen’s Award for Higher Education in 2011.
David has a strong record of public service, having been on the Board of almost every major UK conservation body – WWF, FFI, ZSL (Vice President), WWT, RSPB, RSPCA (Vice President), the Wildlife Trusts (Vice President) and Chairman of Earthwatch.
David has published approximately 2000 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. His research has become increasingly inter-disciplinary as the whole field of conservation has evolved. More recently his biological writings are enmeshed in issues of environmental policy, economics, ethics and research strategy.
Dr Christine Breitenmoser-Würsten
Christine is a wildlife biologist with long-term experience in carnivore ecology and conservation and specialised in conservation genetics
She is involved in long-term ecological field studies of Eurasian lynx in across Europe. She was a co-founder of the Swiss based non-profit foundation KORA – Carnivore Ecology and Wildlife Management that is commissioned by the Federal Government to monitor large carnivore populations.
In 2001, she has been appointed co-chair of the IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group, a world-wide network of cat experts surveying the conservation status of all felid species following the Assess-Plan-Act conservation cycle.
To improve efficiency and sustainability of conservation activities, Christine has been involved in strategic conservation planning on regional and national levels and has helped facilitating workshops in different cultures and languages. As lack of capacity is often identified as a constraint, capacity development has become an important part of her work.
She has been the editor of Cat News over the past 20 years and has helped many field biologists publish their first papers.
Meidina Fitriana
Meidina Fitriana is a young conservationist from Indonesia.
While working with SINTAS Indonesia Foundation, she led the monitoring project for wild cats in the Leuser Ecosystem in Sumatra, Indonesia. Because of her work, in 2024, she was featured in the National Geographic Arabia magazine as a young conservationist leader.
Currently, she is pursuing a master’s degree at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington.
Her research focuses on analyzing the density of the Sumatran tiger and the Sunda clouded leopard, as well as the occupancy of the Asian golden cat.
Prof Tadeu G. de Oliveira
Tadeu G. de Oliveira is a Professor of the Wildlife Conservation and Ecology Lab. (LabCEVS), Maranhão State University (UEMA), researcher for Instituto Pró-Carnívoros, Pró-Vida Brasil, and member of the IUCN/SSC/Cat Specialist Group and Canid Specialist Group.
He is the founder and chair of the Tiger Cats Conservation Initiative (TCCI), which focuses on the conservation of nine small felids in the Americas. His interests include the ecology, conservation, and natural history of neotropical felids, carnivores, and endangered species.
He leads a long-term, multidisciplinary, continent-wide conservation program focusing on ecology, biogeography, natural history, and conservation of nine small felids of the tropical Americas (“Projeto Gatos do Mato – Brasil-Américas”/Project Wild Cats Brazil-Americas), which contributes to their conservation, status assessment, population monitoring, and understanding of their ecology.
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