COMMITTEE
ONLINE CONFERENCE - Global inclusion
SMALL CATS SYMPOSIUM COMMITTEE
Dr. Axel Moehrenschlager
Dr. Axel Moehrenschlager is Panthera’s Director for the Small Cats Program and for Conservation Translocations.
His primary motivation is to work with others around the world to save small cats in harmony with local communities.
Axel is also Chair of the IUCN SSC Conservation Translocation Specialist Group, and Leadership Committee Member of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission. Dr. Moehrenschlager is a Research Associate at Oxford University where he received his Ph.D., multiple Erskine Fellow at New Zealand’s University of Christchurch, Adjunct Associate Professor at Clemson University in the U.S.A., and Adjunct Professor at Canada’s University of Calgary.
In Canada, he founded the Centre for Conservation Research and the Wilder Institute. In broader capacities, he serves on several funding and award committees such as the UK-based Conservation Collective and the St. Andrews Prize for the Environment
Dr. Wai-Ming Wong
Wai-Ming Wong, PhD, is a conservation biologist and Director of Small Cats Conservation Science at Panthera.
He is working across South and southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America to advance research and field-based conservation for all 33 small wild cat species. He has authored numerous scientific papers on small cat ecology, population trends, and habitat use, contributing key insights for more than a dozen species.
Wai-Ming is an active member of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group and has participated in multiple wild cat Red and Green List assessments. His work integrates advanced wildlife monitoring with community partnerships to protect some of the world’s most elusive felids.
Dr. Constanza Napolitano
Veterinary Doctor and PhD in Sciences from the University of Chile.
She completed a Morris Animal Foundation (US) Postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (Chile). She was visiting researcher with international scholarships at the University of Sydney (Australia) and the University of British Columbia (Canada).
She has been principal investigator of more than 15 projects funded by Fondecyt-ANID (Chile) or international agencies. She has published more than 50 scientific articles in the fields of conservation genetics and pathogen ecology, as well as outreach books. She has received 3 national awards (Chile).
Her research focuses on the effects of human landscape disturbance on small carnivores, especially wild felids. She is a member of the Guigna Working Group and the Andean Cat Alliance, where she coordinates the Global Andean Cat Genetics Program. She is currently an associate professor at Universidad de Los Lagos (Osorno, Chile), where she leads the Conservation Genetics Laboratory.
Prof. Colleen T. Downs
Prof Colleen T. Downs (BSc Hons, MEd, PhD, Pr Nat Sci) has been at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) since mid-1994.
She is a Professor in the School of Life Sciences, now the Discipline of Biological Sciences, UKZN, Pietermaritzburg campus and is a University Fellow. Downs holds an NRF SARChI Research Chair in Ecosystem Health and Biodiversity in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.
She is a terrestrial vertebrate biologist with broad and interdisciplinary research interests. These include conservation, ecology, physiology and behaviour of terrestrial vertebrates (fish, herps, birds and mammals) in unpredictable environments and with changing land use.
Dr. Shomita Mukherjee
Shomita is currently employed at the Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, South-India Centre of the Wildlife Institute of India, in the Conservation Biology Division as a Senior Principal Scientist.
Since the 1990’s, she has been involved in multiple studies on several species of small cats in India exploring their diets, distributions and genetic aspects.
Her work explores the link between ecology, evolution and genetic variation in small cats and how such information could contribute towards their conservation. She is a member of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group and the Species Survival Commission.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Joleen Broadfield
Panthera’s Small Cats Data Scientist. Originally from France, she has spent much of her professional career in South Africa, where she contributed to human–wildlife coexistence initiatives and managed a project examining the impacts of urbanization on caracal behaviour, diet, movement patterns, and genetic health in the Cape Peninsula.
After joining Panthera in 2017 to lead leopard camera trap monitoring surveys, she quickly expanded her role supporting the development of Panthera’s in-house data system, strengthening the organization’s growing data infrastructure.
In 2020, motivated by a strong interest in small felid conservation, Joleen joined Panthera’s Small Cats Program. Collaborating across Panthera initiatives and with various external partners, she works with long-term datasets to better understand small cat distribution and patterns across landscapes more commonly studied through big cat research.
She has played a key supporting role in coordinating the first Virtual Small Cats Symposium, helping to bring the event together for the global small cat conservation community.
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