Members

Nucharin also is the Dhole Working Group coordinator for the CSG. Nucharin Songsasen is the Center Head of the Center for Species Survival, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. Her research focuses on developing innovative technologies to rescuing valuable genetics from wild canids and felids. She also has developed partnerships with national and international governmental and non-governmental organizations to conduct multidisciplinary studies that address threats to the sustainability of wild canids living in zoos or nature. Nucharin has adjunct appointments at the University of Maryland, Cornell University and George Mason University. She is also the coordinator of the AZA’s Maned wolf Species Survival Plan. Nucharin received her DVM from Kasetsart University (Thailand), her MSc and PhD from the University of Guelph (Canada).

Geraldine is a wildlife biologist and conservationist with a passion for canids. Her research centres on wolves and sympatric species inhabiting the high-altitude ecosystems of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. She has conducted extensive fieldwork to advance the scientific understanding of the Himalayan wolf and to identify threats to its conservation. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, Geraldine integrates ecological research with local cultural knowledge, public outreach, and policy advocacy. Her work is driven by the appreciation that conserving viable carnivore populations is essential to maintaining the ecological integrity of the ecosystems they inhabit.

Claudio’s main interests are the ecology of wild carnivores, disease dynamics and the relationships between wildlife and rural communities. After decades working on Ethiopian wolves and other canid species, a solitary forager living on large family packs in the highlands of Ethiopia, he remains fascinated by the adaptability of canid society, and how wolves, wild dogs and foxes continue to thrive in many diverse habitats across the globe. A conservation biologist at the University of Oxford, where he is the Deputy Director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Claudio works on several rare or threatened carnivore species spanning four continents.

Lauren specializes in using genomic tools to study the evolutionary histories of various canid species and its application to conservation. Her work involves building large genomic datasets to investigate phylogenetic relationships among species, genomic diversity, and adaptation across the genome using historical and modern samples. She has conducted extensive work on wolves in Asia and has collaborative projects on black-backed jackals, golden jackals, and red wolves. Her work directly informs conservation management and efforts for several endangered species.

Mike Hoffmann, a South African national, heads up global conservation programmes at the Zoological Society of London. He has more than 20 years of experience in international conservation and biodiversity-related policy, applying technical knowledge and scientific expertise to delivering innovative solutions to a range of conservation challenges. He has worked in academic, non-governmental and inter-governmental sectors, including for 10 years with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). He serves as a member of several international steering committees or advisory bodies and has published extensively. He co-edited the 2004 Canid Action Plan, and is co-editor of the 6-volume Mammals of Africa. He currently serves as Red List Authority Coordinator for the Canid Specialist Group.

David established the Canid Specialist Group and was its first Chair. A professor of wildlife conservation at the University of Oxford he is the founder and Director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit. His research interests range broadly across diverse topics in wildlife conservation and management. Nonetheless, from his early work on red foxes, David retains an emphasis on the behavioural ecology of carnivores. He has worked on wolves in Italy, crab-eating foxes in Brazil, golden jackals in Israel, Arctic foxes in Russia, and Ethiopian wolves amongst others. More recently David’s work has become interdisciplinary, with an increasing interest in issues of environmental policy, economics and research strategy.

L. David Mech (“Dave”) is a Senior Research Scientist, US Geological Survey and Adjunct Professor, University of Minnesota. Degrees = B.S., Cornell University, Ph.D. and honorary doctorate, Purdue University. Some 500 articles and 13 books. Dave studied wolves on Isle Royale, in Minnesota, Yellowstone National Park, Denali National Park and summers 1986-2010, Ellesmere Island. He chaired the IUCN Wolf Specialist Group, 1978 to 2013, and is advisor on wolves to the chair of the CSG. Founder and board member of the International Wolf Center (wolf.org). Awards include the Wildlife Society’s Aldo Leopold Award. Also see davemech.org.

Shlomo is a conservation biologist and PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on the ecology of human-carnivore conflict and management policy in modified mosaic landscapes. He uses non-invasive research methods such as camera trapping, tracking, and scat analysis to study the activity patterns of grey wolf (Canis lupus) and golden jackal (Canis aureus) in relation to anthropogenic pressures and the wider mammalian community structure. Shlomo is working closely with local ranchers and wildlife authorities to mitigate livestock losses to wild canids and promote sustainable long-term human-wildlife coexistence.

Courtney is a quantitative ecologist with a passion for conducting research with real world applications to conservation. Her research focuses on African wild dogs and other subordinate and small carnivores, specifically surrounding spatial and behavioural ecology at the population and guild levels. While her research focus on sub-Saharan Africa, she has experience with North American meso and small carnivores as well. Her research on canids includes African wild dogs, coyotes, black-backed and side-striped jackals, and grey and bat-eared foxes. Courtney has been Assistant Editor at Canid Biology and Conservation since 2020.

Anders Angerbjörn has been working with the arctic fox project in Sweden since 1986. Karin Norén is now an important member of the project at Stockholm University. There are several conservation actions in Sweden, Norway and Finland with both supplemental feeding, red fox control and release of captive breed foxes. The population has recovered from a low of 50 adults at the year 1998 and 2026 we have more than 500 arctic foxes in this area. There are still conservation problems such as severe inbreeding, fragmentation, infections by sarcoptic mange and red fox predation. Our research includes full genome analyses of the arctic fox also including animals from other areas. But we are continuing the summer field work with observations, tagging, fitting animals with collars, etc.

Luigi is a professor of animal ecology and conservation biology at the University of Rome since 1987. He has pioneered wolf research and conservation in Italy in 1972 and is still involved in several projects at national and European scale. He has been a member of the Steering Committee of IUCN/SSC since 1996 and Chair of the IUCN/SSC Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe since 2002.

Rogerio is a Brazilian biologist and currently is the chief of the National Research Center for Carnivore Conservation (CENAP) within an Environmental Ministry’s agency (ICMBio). Additionally he is an associate researcher at the NGO Instituto Pro-Carnivoros. He has been coordinating and conducting research on carnivore ecology and conservation throughout Brazil specially focused on canids in the Cerrado biome. As a government agent, he supervises the National Action Plans involving the carnivore species and specifically coordinates the Maned Wolf National Action Plan. He has been conducting research on maned wolf in Brazil through the “Maned Wolf Conservation Program”. Within the Canid Specialist Group he has been connecting the maned wolf researchers and developing common strategies to the species in the entire South America though the Maned Wolf Working Group.

Brian is the Associate Director and a Research Ecologist with the California State University – Stanislaus, Endangered Species Recovery Program. His primary research interest is the ecology and conservation of wild canids. He has worked with wolves, coyotes, grey foxes, red foxes, kit foxes and island foxes. Brian serves on recovery teams for San Joaquin kit foxes and island foxes. He currently is involved in research and conservation efforts for endangered San Joaquin kit foxes and island foxes and other sensitive species in California.

Karen’s research interests are diverse, focused on understanding the basic biology and ecological interactions that occur at both the species and community level. She has used a variety of approaches to address these research questions including behavioural ecology, physiological ecology, reproductive physiology, general ecology, ecological genetics and ecological niche modelling. Her research has been conducted with both wild and captive populations, as the latter can provide insight into basic biological information that may be impossible to collect in the field. Karen has conducted field research in several Neotropical countries including Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. The majority of these field studies have been focused on understanding the community structure of Neotropical carnivores and developing regional conservation strategies.

Jorgelina studied biology in Argentina obtained her doctorate at Oxford university in 2003. Jorgelina is a conservation scientist at WildCRU and is the Director for Science of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme, a species she has studied since the 1990s. Jorgelina’s areas of expertise are highland ecology, carnivore ecology and sociobiology, spatial ecology, species distribution modeling, population dynamics and monitoring. Her current work is on species conservation in mountains and arid lands, and how they are affected by land use and climate change. She runs the People & Wildlife Initiative (peopleandwildlfie.org.uk).

Fernanda is a lecturer of ecology and conservation biology at the Federal University of Amapá (UNIFAP) since 2010. She is also an associate researcher at the Brazilian NGO Instituto Pró-Carnívoros. Since 2002 she has been conducting and coordinating research projects on Amazonian mid-sized and large-bodied vertebrates with emphasis on mammals. She has also contributed actively to the increase in information on bush dogs and short-eared dogs in Amazonian landscapes with different forest proportions and degrees of anthropogenic disturbances.

Karin Norén is a researcher and docent in animal ecology at the Department of Zoology, Stockholm University. Her work focuses on conservation genomics and population ecology of the Arctic fox, with particular interest in inbreeding, fitness, and population dynamics in fluctuating environments.

I am a biologist graduated from the Universidad de la República, Uruguay. I did my postgraduate studies at the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. My master’s study was on the trophic ecology (diet and prey selection) of the maned wolf and my D.Sci. was in biogeography of temperate grassland mammals from Uruguay and southern Brazil. I am currently a professor at the Universidad de la República and my research activities are focused on the study of predators (crab-eating fox, Pampa’s fox and Geoffroy’s cat) and their interaction with livestock production (sheep and poultry), mainly in northern Uruguay. It also includes the impact of the invasive alien species wild boar, as the main predator of sheep.

Ben employs genomic and field-based methodologies to understand evolutionary histories of particular canid species and the generalities that unite their evolutionary pathways. Much of his research is motivated by curiosity about the relationships between individual behaviour and population-level processes, including the historical roles played by behavioural plasticity and adaptation in the evolution of niche specialization. He is especially interested in research that directly or indirectly helps us conserve endangered canid populations and species. In addition to canids, he works with his students on a broad range of and other mammalian carnivores.

Doug is a Senior Wildlife Biologist in Yellowstone National Park and has been involved with wolf restoration there since 1994. Besides Yellowstone he has also worked with wolves on Isle Royale, in Minnesota, and Indiana (captive). He is a member of the Mexican Wolf Recovery Team and the IUCN Re-Introduction Specialist Group. His main interest is wolf conservation, wolf-prey ecology and population dynamics. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Nevada, Reno, a MS from Michigan Technological University and a BS from the University of Idaho.

Nucharin also is the Dhole Working Group coordinator for the CSG. Nucharin Songsasen is the Center Head of the Center for Species Survival, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. Her research focuses on developing innovative technologies to rescuing valuable genetics from wild canids and felids. She also has developed partnerships with national and international governmental and non-governmental organizations to conduct multidisciplinary studies that address threats to the sustainability of wild canids living in zoos or nature. Nucharin has adjunct appointments at the University of Maryland, Cornell University and George Mason University. She is also the coordinator of the AZA’s Maned wolf Species Survival Plan. Nucharin received her DVM from Kasetsart University (Thailand), her MSc and PhD from the University of Guelph (Canada).

Suvi is an anatomist and paleobiologist working in the University of Helsinki, Finland. She has worked on functional anatomy and taxonomy of both extinct and extant carnivores of the Old World. Her current work focuses on the Old World Canis evolution. She also works on the history of the domestic dog in the Northern Europe.

Geraldine is a wildlife biologist and conservationist with a passion for canids. Her research centres on wolves and sympatric species inhabiting the high-altitude ecosystems of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. She has conducted extensive fieldwork to advance the scientific understanding of the Himalayan wolf and to identify threats to its conservation. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, Geraldine integrates ecological research with local cultural knowledge, public outreach, and policy advocacy. Her work is driven by the appreciation that conserving viable carnivore populations is essential to maintaining the ecological integrity of the ecosystems they inhabit.

Rosie is a Senior Research fellow at the Zoological Society of London and Visiting Professor at Imperial College London. Her work focuses on the coexistence of people and wildlife, especially resolving conflicts and managing disease transmission. Her efforts to conserve the African wild dog span 15 years and include a field conservation project in Kenya and co-leading the Rangewide Conservation Process for wild dogs and cheetah. She has also worked with island foxes, bat-eared foxes and black-backed jackals and still desperately wants to work with dhole.

Bhaskar has an MSc from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun. He conducted a long-term field research project (2000-2005) on the ecology of dholes in Pench Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, central India, leading to a doctoral thesis on the same. This project was an expansion of his previous work as a research scholar on a collaborative study on dholes in Kanha Tiger Reserve and in the adjacent landscapes. In addition to canid biology, he is interested in wild ungulate ecology, plant taxonomy and insect-plant interactions. He is currently coordinating a grant-making program for the conservation of biological diversity of the Western Ghats Region of India.

Muntasir Akash is a faculty member at the Department of Zoology, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is focused on the conservation and ecology of lesser-known carnivores, and leads various camera-trap surveys in Bangladesh. His works have helped to bring dhole, wolf, short-clawed otter, Asiatic golden cat, hog badger, etc. under the conservation spotlight in Bangladesh.

Emily Almberg has spent over twenty years studying the dynamics, impacts, and management of infectious diseases in wildlife. She began her career investigating how viral and parasitic infections spread, persist, and affect gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park. Since then, she has worked for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, conducting surveillance and research to inform the management of respiratory disease in bighorn sheep, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, and white-nose syndrome in bats. She holds a doctorate in Ecology from Penn State University and a master’s in Natural Resources Science and Management from the University of Minnesota.

Francisco completed his PhD in Conservation Biology at the University of Lisbon in 2012 and currently is a researcher at CIBIO/InBIO (University of Porto, Portugal). For the past 20 years, he has been working on ecology and conservation of large carnivores, with a special emphasis on the Iberian wolf. In particular, he conducts research on a wide range of human-wildlife interactions, such as livestock depredation, responses to human disturbance and ethnozoology related to local beliefs and practices towards carnivores. More recently, he participated in several projects in Africa and Middle East aiming ecological studies focused on canids, namely African wolves and Eurasian golden jackals.

Bolivian biologist with 25 years of experience conducting research in ecology and conservation, primarily focused on medium and large mammals, population estimates of keystone species, and human-carnivore conflict. My Master’s thesis demonstrated the value of FSC-certified forests for wildlife conservation. Since 2019, she has participated in responsible forest management audits and verification of ecosystem service impacts in certified forests in Bolivia and Ecuador. Currently, she coordinates the Jaguar Conservation Project as a research associate at the Noel Kempff Mercado Natural History Museum.

On the front lines of wolf restoration in the Western USA since 1988, Suzanne served on the Central Idaho and Yellowstone wolf reintroduction team in the mid-1990s, caring for wolves awaiting transport in northern British Columbia and releasing them in central Idaho. From 1999 to 2019, she managed the wolf compensation program for the USA Northern Rockies and helped initiate many of the nonlethal wolf and livestock programs in the Western USA. Suzanne founded the ongoing Wood River Wolf Project in 2008 to demonstrate that wolves can coexist with sheep operations on national forests when adequate nonlethal deterrents are consistently applied. She is the lead author on the first landscape level wolf and sheep nonlethal measures study Adaptive use of nonlethal strategies for minimizing wolf–sheep conflict in Idaho. She is now the Executive Director of the International Wildlife Coexistence Network where she is helping to protect wolves with communities around the world.

Anagaw Atickem is an assistant professor at Addis Ababa University at the Department of Zoological Sciences. Anagaw has been working on canids of the Ethiopian highlands in particular on the ecology of the newly discovered African wolf and its potential impact on the survival of the Ethiopian via exploitative and interference competition. The other major research by Anagaw is the human carnivore conflict in Ethiopia and potential mitigation techniques. Anagaw with his colleagues establish a local NGO, Afromontane Biodiversity Conservation. In Ethiopia (ABCE), focusing on protecting additional highland habitats for the Ethiopian wolf.

Guy is a professional ecologist specialising in research and management of vertebrate predators, especially dingoes but also foxes, feral cats and spotted-tailed quolls. He has worked with Government and private land managers to develop and implement large scale research, monitoring and management programs for dingoes in coastal, hinterland and desert regions of Australia. Guy currently leads an inter-agency research team and supervises a number of post-graduate research students working on dingo spatial ecology, impacts of control programs and predator-prey relationships.

Shannon Barber-Meyer holds a PhD in wildlife conservation. She has studied tigers in Asia, emperor penguins in Antarctica, and elk calves in Yellowstone National Park and helped reintroduce Mexican wolves into the southwestern United States and gray wolves to Isle Royale National Park. She is currently a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey investigating primarily wolves and white-tailed deer. She is a representative on the Interagency CITES Committee. Shannon lives in Ely, Minnesota, where she helps with the care of captive wolves at the International Wolf Center.

Kylie Cairns is an Australian based population and conservation geneticist. She is passionate about the conservation of canids and using genomic data to inform on-ground conservation and management action plans. To date much of her research has focused on the genetic identity and evolutionary history of dingoes, tackling questions about their origin, ancestry and modern patterns of introgression. She has ongoing research projects on dingoes, NGSD and highland wild dogs and their relationships to other wild canids.

Born and raised in South Africa, Colleen earned a MSc on a population viability analysis of the translocation of cheetah into Matusadona NP, Zimbabwe and a PhD in 2001 on the ecology of honey badgers in the Kagalagadi Transfrontier Reserve, South Africa. She is passionate about carnivores, field based conservation, and finding practical, locally derived solutions to conservation threats. Together with husband Keith they have worked on carnivores in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Mozambique. In 2003, they founded the Niassa Carnivore Project in Niassa Reserve, Mozambique with a goal to secure large carnivores (lions, spotted hyaenas, African wild dogs and leopards) using a four-pronged approach of research, direct mitigation and implementation of solutions, education, and mentorship and capacity building.

Linda has worked in the government wildlife and natural resource management sector since 2000, and specialises in the management and conservation of the K’gari (Fraser Island) dingo population. She is involved in leading a number of on ground actions to support the safety of people and protection of dingoes including risk mitigation, education, research, monitoring, and collaborative actions with the Butchulla First Nations People (the traditional owners of K’gari). Linda understands the complex challenges associated with juggling protected area, visitor and wildlife management objectives. Her research focusses on the diet, ecology and conservation management of dingoes on K’gari (Fraser Island), with the optimism that practical conflict management practices learned from the island will be extended to other human-canid conflict situations.

Olaf’s background is in the areas of phylogenetics, systematics and taxonomy, with a long standing interest in Carnivora. Although his systematic research is increasingly molecular-based, he is also well acquainted with the use and interpretation of morphological data. Using supertree construction, he combined these two types of data to produce two complete and dated species-level evolutionary trees for Carnivora (in 1999 and 2012), with the latter study including conservation information. In 2007, the former study was later included in a supertree for virtually all living species of mammal that Olaf constructed with numerous colleagues.

Juan Carlos is a Spanish biologist with a Ph.D. in animal ecology, working as a consultant on large carnivores and other mammals. He has been studying wolves since 1987 and he is particularly interested in wolf ecology and wolf-human conflicts, including wolf adaptation to modified habitats, prevention of damage to livestock and wolf perception by different social groups. He has directed several wolf projects including the impact of four-lane highways on wolves, the expansion of a wolf populations in agricultural areas, and the relationship of wolves and humans. He prepared the first technical draft of the Spanish Action Plan for Wolves and worked with the Spanish Ministry of the Environment coordinating this Plan from 2005 to 2011.

Gavin is a conservation biologist specialising in canid ecology, conservation, and human–wildlife coexistence. His PhD research focused on the endangered Arabian wolf across Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, using camera trapping, occupancy modelling, and spatial analysis to investigate wolf ecology and factors shaping human–wolf relationships across transboundary landscapes. His work has explored how land use, governance, and social attitudes influence wolf persistence and conservation outcomes in the Southern Levant. Gavin is currently affiliated with the Conflict–Peace–Democracy Cluster at the University of Graz, where his research examines links between biodiversity conservation, environmental cooperation, and peacebuilding.

Dominika is a wildlife biologist studying the genetics, morphology, and conservation of large carnivores, particularly wolves. She completed her PhD at the University of Oulu in 2026, where her research focused on adaptive morphological variation in wolf populations across different environments and the impacts of human activities on carnivores. Her work combines evolutionary biology, geometric morphometrics, and conservation research to better understand adaptation, human impacts on carnivore populations, and canid conservation. She is also involved in coexistence initiatives, including development of educational board games aimed at improving public understanding and tolerance of wolves.

Lu Carbyn is an emeritus research scientist with the Canadian Federal Department of the Environment and an adjunct Professor with the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. He has worked with the Canadian Wildlife Service for 33 years, published / edited 5 book on canids and 150 scientific papers on the subject. He was awarded the William A. Rowan distinguished Service award from the Wildlife Society and the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee medal for his work as a scientist and for conservation of nature. He served on overseas assignments in Portugal, Mexico and Poland and was involved as an advisor / consultant in the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction program.

I am from Mozambique and joined the Niassa Carnivore Project in 2019. It is a project that operates in Niassa Special Reserve managing a 580 sq. km concession. Since then, I have been working as a Conservation Monitoring Assistant, using SMART (Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool) to inform law enforcement decisions. In 2021, I got my PPL (Private Pilot License) and have since conducted aerial patrols, radio tracking monitoring for lions, and others carnivores monitoring. I am working as a Conservation Manager.

Guillaume is a quantitative ecologist interested in carnivore conservation. His area of expertise is in population dynamics, the variation in time of abundance and range of a population. Most of his work has involved developing several population models and population viability analysis (PVA), used to define, assess or improve conservation and management strategies, in collaboration with field projects.

Deana received her Wildlife Biology Bachelor’s, DVM, MPVM and PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California, Davis. She studied disease and reproduction of island foxes and worked on wildlife and ecosystem health projects, both nationally and internationally. She is a senior wildlife veterinarian at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and an Assistant Clinical Professor at UC Davis focused on carnivore health and conservation, emerging wildlife diseases, carnivore conflict and welfare. She works on teams addressing conservation challenges for Sierra Nevada red foxes, San Joaquin kit foxes, island foxes, gray wolves, fishers, Amargosa voles and riparian brush rabbits. Photo Credit: Jaime Rudd

Dean is a wildlife biologist for the territorial government and works with a variety of mammals. His main interest lies with carnivore ecology and management, primarily with wolves and bears. Dean has been a member of the IUCN Wolf Specialist group since 2001 until it joined with the Canid Specialist Group. Dean studies tundra- denning wolves that follow migratory barren-ground caribou to their winter range in the boreal forest. Dean has also accompanied Dr. David Mech on several occasions to the High Arctic to study wolves there.

Scott has studied the ecology, behaviour and conservation of several carnivores since the 1980s, including African wild dogs and grey wolves. He has recently worked on predator-prey dynamics in wolves and elk, the additivity of human wolf harvesting and assessments of population size, and limiting factors for African wild dogs in Zambia.

Caitlin J. Curry is a researcher in conservation genetics at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, specialising in the application of genome-scale data to wildlife conservation and management. Her work focuses on translating population genetic and genomic information into actionable strategies for vulnerable wildlife, particularly large carnivores. She currently assists the New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation, supporting research and conservation of the New Guinea Highland Wild Dog, including documenting expedition findings and contributing to the development of a Zoological Association of America Animal Management Plan studbook.

Fabrize Cuzin has been evaluating the status of mammals in Morocco and consequently proposing management and conservation measures for key species since 1994. Gaining his PhD in 2003 he has continued to collect information compiling and maintaining a database with thousands of records.

Amir is a graduate of Environmental sciences. Amir is a mammologist and conservation biologist. Amir has studied Iranian mammals including wild canids since 2000. There are six species of wild canids in Iran: grey wolf, golden jackal, red fox, Ruppell’s fox, Blanford’s fox and Corsac fox.

Ahmed Eddine completed his Ph.D. in Conservation Biology at the Tlemcen University in 2017. Now, he is an Assistant Professor at the Unversity of Setif (Algeria). Ahmed did research on Canis lupaster in Algeria (Behavior, Social Ecology, Genetic diversity and structure). Currently, he is focusing on biodiversity conservation, increase knowledge on Algerian mammals and mainly big carnivores, combining ecological and molecular techniques to adapt the appropriate action plans in the conservation of the Algerian canids when trying to find a solution to reduce the human-predator conflicts (persecution) in the region.

Dorothee is an arctic ecologist studying changes in the tundra ecosystem under the impact of climate change and changes in human use. She is working with arctic fox conservation in northern Norway, a species which is endangered in Scandinavia. She focusses also on the drivers of red fox expansion in the low Arctic, red fox management and changes in carnivore community composition.

Ehab is a biodiversity and protected areas proficient, with experiences in mammals. Since more than 16 years, he has been working on studying canids of Jordan with special interest in the Blanford’s fox, golden jackal and the Arabian wolf. He has published various article and books, with his recent and first national red list of mammals in Jordan. He has contributed to enhance the understanding on canids in Jordan and neighboring counties and contributed significantly in studying the illegal hunting, trade, traditional folk medicine, and threatened species.

Girma is a conservation biologist with a special passion for carnivores. His research interests are the conservation of endangered carnivores in the Afroalpine habitats of Ethiopia, especially focusing on addressing socioeconomic aspects of human-carnivore conflict. He is the Amhara coordinator for Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme, oversees research and conservation activities and liaises with government agencies and collaborators. His PhD at the University of Leiden dealt with ecology of the Ethiopian wolf in a changing landscape. He is also a member of the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Think Tank.

Sarah is the Curator of Mammals at ZSL London and Whipsnade Zoos and has been working in zoological collections in the UK for the last 30 years. During her time in zoos, she has managed a range of Canid species including African wild dogs, Maned wolf, Bat-eared fox, Fennec Fox, Grey and Iberian wolves and Bush dogs. Sarah has furthered her passion for Canid species in her role as Chair of the Canid & Hyaenid Taxon Advisory Group within the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, overseeing the ex-situ conservation breeding programmes of threatened canids, ensuring genetically healthy insurance populations.

Eli is a professor of behavioral ecology at Tel Aviv University. He has studied behavior and ecology of Blanford’s foxes, Ruppell’s foxes, arctic foxes, and Arabian wolves in the wild using observations, telemetry, and experimental approaches. He has also conducted genetic studies focusing on barriers for dispersal, inbreeding avoidance, hybridization, population size, parentage analysis, and phylogeny in a variety of canid species. Many of his studies on canids have implications for conservation. He is associated with the Canid Specialist Group since the early 1990s.

Eric is a Research Wildlife Biologist with the National Wildlife Research Center and Associate Professor in the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University. He has conducted research on the behaviour, ecology and management of wild canids, mainly wolves, coyotes and foxes, for close to 30 years.

Raquel is a biologist trained in evolutionary genetics, with a major interest in processes that drive genetic diversity in extreme settings, as highly human-modified landscapes and environmental extremes. She has been working with canids since 2010, and is currently focused in the impact of hybridization between domestic dogs and grey wolves in the Iberian Peninsula, and in the processes of adaptation to live in arid environments using foxes as model species. She is also very interested in the use of non-invasive DNA methodologies in monitoring canid populations, generating applied knowledge to inform conservation actions. Raquel chairs the Ecological Genomics research group in CIBIO/InBIO.

Rosemary is a highly motivated conservation biologist with 17 years of experience working in wildlife conservation in East and Southern Africa. Since early 2008, she has worked to conserve African wild dogs in southern Zimbabwe, for the African Wildlife Conservation Fund. Her areas of expertise include working at local, regional and international scales with a variety of stakeholders on conservation issues and designing, implementing and managing large scale field and education projects, particularly pertaining to wild canid conservation. In 2013 she became the Southern African Coordinator for the Range Wide Conservation Program for Cheetah and Wild Dogs (ZSL / WCS) and works across the Southern African region to coordinate and support conservation efforts for African wild dog and cheetah.

I am a conservation biologist interested in the integration of quantitative and interdisciplinary approaches to conservation challenges. With the interest in nature conservation, human-wildlife interactions, larger carnivore conservation, and other megafauna in human-dominated landscapes. I have been involved in field research since 2001. My doctoral research was on the ecology of the Indian wolf in the Great Indian Bustard Sanctuary, Maharashtra, India. Before joining the Wildlife Institute of India, I worked as Wildlife Survey Program Manager for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Afghanistan Biodiversity Project and was involved in the design and coordination of wildlife surveys in the Wakhan Corridor (Pamirs), capacity building in the environment sector and development of the Red List. My research species and system range from Wolves in semi-arid and trans-Himalayan landscapes, Leopards from the Himalayas to Central India, Dholes from low density to high-density areas, Marc

Luke is a professor of ecology, conservation, and wildlife biology at California State University Bakersfield. His main interests are in determining how environmental change alters long-term dynamics of wildlife in human-modified landscapes, with a special focus on canids. He has been studying canids for over a decade and has worked with kit foxes, coyotes, gray foxes, and red foxes. Luke is currently studying urban and exurban populations of the endangered San Joaquin kit fox in the Central Valley of California and their interactions with other carnivores.

Kaveh has a MSc in Environment Management. He is employed by the Environment and Sustainable Agriculture office (http://esao.areo.ir). He has been involved with developing the guidelines for biosafety protocols for national guidelines (2007-2014) and climate change convention (2007-2012). From 2007-2011, he was the projects coordinator for the AG. Sector Kyoto Protocol and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). He continues his involvement as a member of the national CDM committee. He is involved with various public awareness activities, including designing targeted education courses. He is a grey wolf consultant for a variety of groups, including mass media, university professors, students, and herdmen.

Jennifer is a wildlife ecologist with a keen interest on canids – their ecology, behavior and management as well as human dimensions. After studying agricultural sciences with focus on animal ethology, she graduated in wildlife ecology and management at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. She is the founder and coordinator of the Golden Jackal project in Austria, at the institute of Wildlife Biology and Game Management. Her research is focused on understanding golden jackals and their distribution in Europe in newly colonized but also in core areas, specific conservation and hunting policies, and includes studies on captive animals to explore certain behaviors and social mechanisms. Interdisciplinary approaches through including hunters, nature conservation and the public, motivate her work. Her aims lie in raising awareness about canids within the ecosystem and in supporting co-existence.

I have a broad interest in ecology and conservation. In my research I focus mainly on large carnivores with a special interest in canids. I currently work with Asiatic wild dogs or dholes in Indonesia, mainly on Java, gathering knowledge about their status, threats and population dynamics to aid management and conservation of the species.

I studied biology at the Goethe University in Frankfurt (Germany) and wrote my diploma thesis about chrono ethology of Maned wolves at Frankfurt Zoo. Afterwards I did internships in Frankfurt Zoo and Opelzoo Kronberg. After working in the zoos of Heidelberg und for ZSL in London I started working as curator for Zoo Leipzig since 2010. Since 2007 I am EEP coordinator for the maned wolf and since 2010 I am also keeper of the international studbook of this species. My aim is to connect in situ and ex situ conservation for the maned wolf and be in contact to all relevant parties.

For the past 15 years, since his doctoral work on the Indian wolf and blackbuck in 1990 at VPI&SU, Virginia, Yadvendradev has been researching Indian canids. He currently holds the position of Sr. Professor and Head the Department of Animal Ecology & Conservation Biology at the Wildlife Institute of India based in Dehradun. His other research and conservation interests include Asiatic lions, tigers and striped hyenas, all of which have ongoing research projects. His major job responsibility has been to design and conduct country wide assessments for assessing the status of tigers, large carnivores, prey and their habitat.

Jan is a research associate at WildCRU, where he has studied canid ecology and conservation since 2004, with projects on cape foxes, bat-eared foxes, and black-backed jackals in South Africa, and projects on dholes in Bhutan, Laos, and Cambodia. His current project focuses on the ecology and interactions of dholes and golden jackals in eastern Cambodia. Prior to WildCRU, Jan studied coyote ecology in Kansas for this MS, the ecology and relationships of swift foxes and coyotes in Texas for his PhD, and red deer-wolf relationships in Bialowieza, Poland, for a postdoc. His main ecological interests are carnivore interactions and predator-prey relationships. He is also interested in the trophic cascades caused by large carnivores, especially how larger carnivores affect the ecology of smaller carnivores and their prey. More generally, he is interested in promoting carnivore conservation and sustainable development, especially through training and capacity building in developing countries.

I am a wildlife biologist with a strong interest in carnivore biology, especially canids. My research focuses on understanding the behavior, ecology, and conservation of carnivores in human-dominated landscapes. I have a deep interest in movement ecology, and I pursued my PhD on the movement patterns and behavioral ecology of the Indian wolf (Canis lupus pallipes) in such environments. I am also passionate about using remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to address ecological questions. By integrating spatial tools with field-based research, I aim to better understand habitat use, landscape connectivity, the effect of linear infrastructure on movement, and the conservation needs of wide-ranging carnivores. My work is driven by a commitment to developing science-based solutions for conserving wildlife in increasingly fragmented and human-influenced habitats.

Ambika Prasad Khatiwada works at the National Trust for Nature Conservation in Nepal and is also involved with several national and international professional organizations. He has broad interests in community-based conservation, human-wildlife coexistence, and combating wildlife crime. He has been working on dholes and other endangered species for more than 15 years. His work connects high-level policy with practical fieldwork.

Felix is a scientist at the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology, department of integrative biology and evolution at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. His fields of expertise include carnivores, wildlife ecology (habitat selection and animal movement in particular), land use/and cover dynamics and LULc Modelling, remote sensing and GIS applications in forestry, protected areas, evolution, population ecology, spatial ecology, ecological modelling and biostatics. Species of interest have included the Eurasian Lynx, brown bears and Gray wolf. Examples of some of his research involvements include study of livestock protection methods and non-lethal solution for wolves in Germany and the recovery of large carnivores in human dominated landscapes.

Klaus is a broadly trained biologist specializing in genetics and genomics and their application to the conservation of biodiversity. He, his students and collaborators develop and apply state-of-the-art genomic tools to inform conservation management strategies of ex situ and in situ populations of endangered species. He has worked on various projects related to canid population genetics and molecular phylogenetics since 1993 and is currently focused on the comparative and conservation genomics of several canid species. He serves on the council of the Genome 10K Consortium and Vertebrate Genomes Project, which aims to generate and assemble high quality chromosome-level genomes for more than 70,000 vertebrate species to address fundamental questions in biology, evolution and biodiversity conservation. Klaus is member of the IUCN/SSC Otter and SmalI Carnivore Specialist Groups. He is also a member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Molecular Data for Population Management Scientif

My name is Theodoros Kominos, and I am a Zoologist/Ecologist with a Master’s specialization in Ecology, a wildlife conservationist, and a Scientific Collaborator and Researcher at the Department of Zoology, School of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Greece. For the past 18 years, I have been involved in the study and conservation of wolves (Canis lupus) and golden jackals (Canis aureus) in Greece. I am currently conducting my PhD research focusing on the behaviour of wild canids and how human-modified environments shape the behaviour and ecology of wolves, golden jackals, and red foxes (Vulpes vulpes). Over the past seven years, my research has combined the use of drones equipped with thermal cameras, handheld cameras, and camera traps to study behaviour, habitat use, and human–wildlife interactions, contributing to the conservation of wild canids in Greece.

Alyona is a conservation researcher at the ACBK (Birdlife Kazakhstan). She did her PhD on the ecology of steppe mammals in Kazakhstan. Since 2014 she leads a research on the population of steppe wolf in Kazakhstan, identifying current distribution, ecological role in grasslands and men-wolf conflicts.

Miha is employed as a wildlife researcher and associate professor at the University of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty, where he is head of the UL Wildlife Ecology Lab (https://wildlifelabul.splet.arnes.si/). Miha has dedicated most of his studies to grey wolf, golden and black-backed jackals, Eurasian lynx, common leopard, cheetah, lion, snow leopard, and brown bears in Eurasia and Africa. His research has focused on community and behavioural ecology of carnivores, conservation biology and wildlife management. This has resulted in >150 scientific peer-review papers and international book chapters. He is also involved in several conservation projects, focusing mainly on supporting recovery of large carnivore populations and preventing human-carnivore conflicts.

Josip, a DVM with MS in bear ecology and PhD in wolf ecology, did his initial “wolf” training at the “K-lab” in Ely, Minnesota in 1996. He is a professor at the Biology Department, Veterinary Faculty, University of Zagreb, Croatia. He worked on: large carnivore’s habitat analysis, telemetry, predation and attacks on livestock, animal diseases and mortality survey, development of carnivore’s management plans, assessment of the impact of infrastructure development on large carnivores, monitoring of large carnivores, delivery of specialized trainings (large carnivore’s capturing and handling, distinguishing signs of predators on prey, emergency response). Josip consulted on and participated in wolf/brown bear study projects in Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Greece, Italy and Turkey. Josip is a member of National Comity for Large Carnivores in Croatia since 1996 and contributed in the developing and implementation of wolf, bear and lynx manage

Naresh is currently a PhD scholar at the University of Inland Norway studying Himalayan wolves in Nepal. He is also the Nepal country program manager at the Himalayan Wolves Project.

Renata, a wildlife veterinarian with a master in Forest Sciences, has work in tropical conservation for the last 25 years. Since 2000 she has worked with the Center for Tropical Conservation/ Duke University in Peruvian Amazon studying the elusive short-eared dog and directing a large wildlife conflict-solving project at the Interoceanic Highway. In Brazil, she directs her own reserve in the Atlantic Forest, where she created her own research centre and teaches landscape ecology at Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Parana. Her work gave scientific basis for the creations of four new protected areas in Brazil and one in Peru.

Yibin is a Chinese wildlife researcher with over ten years of fieldwork experience. He leads the “Search for the Last Northern Dholes” project in the Qilian Mountains, using camera traps and scientific monitoring to support dhole conservation — including the establishment of China’s first provincial nature reserve for the species. His work also engages the public through photography and media. He specializes in GIS, habitat and corridor modeling, and field surveys. He is interested in dhole ecology, behaviour, habitat use, interspecific interactions, and human–carnivore coexistence.

Marcela is a biologist specialized in ecology, evolution, and documentation of biodiversity, with expertise in community ecology, biogeography, and conservation. She has 15+ years of experience in vertebrate zoology (mastozoology). She completed her Ph.D. in Zoology at the Federal University of Pará in Brazil. Currently, her research is focused on understanding the effects of climate change and land use on Amazonian carnivores.

Peter has a PhD in Zoology from the University of Pretoria’s Mammal Research Institute and is the Policy Initiative Coordinator for Panthera’s Lion Program. His PhD thesis evaluated the social and economic determinants of success for conserving African wild dogs outside of protected areas in South Africa. He has continued to work on this species in both Kenya and Zimbabwe. His research interests and expertise in practical conservation include illegal hunting and the bush meat trade, trophy hunting, human-wildlife conflict, wildlife-based land uses as well a predator conservation. A particular focus has been in conserving predators outside of protected areas and methods to reduce edge-effects within the parks themselves. He has worked across many southern and east African countries conducting research and has implemented a range of practical conservation interventions.

Rurik is a professor at the Research Area on Conservation Biology at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Lerma. He is a Mexican carnivore and conservation biologist. His work focuses on research and implementation of actions that advance the conservation of carnivores, threatened species and their habitats. He has a special interest in species’ reintroductions, and in the identification and protection of biologically important areas. An important part of his activities is on outreach about the species and areas he studies and about Nature conservation issues in general. Most of his career has taken place in grasslands and temperate forests. He has been involved in research and in conservation efforts with species like bison, Mexican wolf, kit fox, black-footed ferret, prairie dogs and North American Porcupine.

Biologist and mammalogist with interest in the distribution, biogeography and conservation of mammals in the Andean region. Master in zoology with specialization in ecology and conservation. Researcher associated with the Mammalogy Department of the Natural History Museum (UNMSM). Active member of the Ecuadorian Association of Mammalogy and the Peruvian Association of Mammalogy. Specialist in SIG and in the modeling of ecological niches. Ha has collaborated with the IUCN in the conservation of some other groups of flora and fauna. He is currently interested in the conservation of the Sechuran fox in the southern region of Ecuador and northern Peru.

José is a conservation scientist with a Ph.D. in conservation biology. He is interested in the integration of quantitative and interdisciplinary approaches to face conservation and management challenges. With particular interest in nature conservation, human-wildlife interactions, and large carnivores and other megafauna in human-dominated landscapes. Although his career has spanned several canid species, he is mainly focused on wolves, particularly wolves persisting in human-dominated landscapes. One of his case studies is the Iberian wolf, a paradigmatic example to understand the adaptations of both wolves and people to the coexistence, and its consequences. José is always interested in generating knowledge that can be used to inform policies and interested stakeholders.

Estela is an Argentine researcher and professor at the Universidad Nacional del Sur and CONICET. Since 1998, she has specialized in the study of canids, particularly the pampas fox, focusing on their fundamental biology and conservation. Her extensive fieldwork explores the dynamics of carnivores in anthropized landscapes. By researching these interactions, she works to develop effective mitigation tools and sustainable management strategies that foster coexistence between wildlife and human activities, ensuring the protection of these species in modified environments.

Moreangels Mbizah is the Founder and Executive Director of Wildlife Conservation Action, an organization dedicated to conserving biodiversity, promoting human-wildlife coexistence and empowering local communities. She is also the Focal Working Group Leader of the Sebungwe region in the KAZA TFCA’s Carnivore Conservation Coalition and working to restore and rehabilitate the wildlife population and habitat of Sebungwe. Moreangels is committed to the conservation of large carnivores including the endangered African Wild dog which she has been studying and protecting for over a decade. Moreangels received her DPhil in Zoology from the University of Oxford, she is also a TED Fellow and a Mandela Washington Fellow.

Tico is the founder and director of The Botswana Predator Conservation Trust which was set up as the Botwana Wild Dog Research Project in 1989 and is now one of the longest running conservation research projects in Africa covering all the large carnivore species in Botswana. Tico completed his PhD in Animal Behaviour from the University of California whilst starting his work in the Okavango Delta in 1989. His work on the African wild dog in particular has helped to move this species away from misunderstanding and persecution. Tico and his wife supervise a team of researchers and graduate students who undertake the projects ongoing work in carnivore research and conservation. They manage a research camp in the Eastern side of the Okavango Delta that has been operating since 1990.They also manage a wildlife biochemistry laboratory in the village of Maun along with an expanding children’s wildlife education program called Coaching for Conservation.

Gus studied large carnivores, mainly in the Kgagalagadi Transfrontier and Kruger National Parks, over a forty year period (1972-2012). During this time he ran the Kruger Park wild dog project from 1989 until he retired in 2006. He was the founder and first chair of the South African Wild Dog Action Group (WAG).

The beginning of Axel’s career included raising US captive wolf pups and radio-tracking wolf-hunted wood bison in Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park. Over the last 20 years he has worked on swift fox reintroduction in Canada and Montana and has collaborated on studies of demographic growth, disease prevalence, genetic structure and habitat use. This includes Mexican/U.S collaborations on guild dynamics of swift and kit foxes with coyotes and red foxes. Axel founded the Centre for Conservation Research at the Calgary Zoological Society in Canada, a group focused on reintroduction issues and the science of community-based conservation internationally. Axel chairs the North American Section of the SSC Reintroduction Specialist Group and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Calgary.

Jed is a faculty member of the Wildlife and Fisheries Biology Program at the University of Vermont. He has been involved with the Canid Specialist Group since 2004 and now serves as Programme Coordinator and co-Editor of Canid Biology & Conservation. Much of his research focuses on understanding the behavior and ecology of wild canids and addressing questions related to their conservation and management. Most studies have involved foxes, including corsac fox, red fox, and kit fox, but also larger canids like wolves and wild dogs, and occurred at sites in the USA, Africa, and Asia.

Muhammad is working as Assistant Professor in Zoology Department, PMAS-Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi Pakistan. He has been involved in field studies since 1994. His focus is on population studies, habitat evaluation, food preferences, breeding ecology and conservation. As in other regions of the world, the canids in Pakistan are declining rapidly; he is studying the population and dietary preferences of these canids through pellet analysis.

Dusit was interested in large mammal monitoring since 2001. His interests include a range of questions related to conservation and population ecology. Most of his research has focused on carnivore conservation such bears and small carnivore species. He conducts field research and teaches a field technique course. Dusit assists students and collaborators to deploy appropriate methodologies and undertake data analysis for population and distribution models, using modern computational techniques that are still relatively new to the region. To capacitate regional researchers and graduate students in the quantitative data analysis for effective conservation action.

University of Victoria, Canada and Raincoast Conservation Foundation, B.C., Canada

Paul is a Professor at University of Victoria and Senior Scientist with Raincoast Conservation Foundation, where he supervises graduate student research. He is an internationally recognized authority on wolves, with research experience in several regions of the world. He has been conducting field research on wolves, coyotes, and foxes since 1972, with interest in canine behaviour, applied ecology, epidemiology, and environmental philosophy. Paul has published numerous scholarly articles on the ecology, behaviour, and conservation of large carnivores, including three books on wolves. His current research focuses on conservation of wolves and the effects of human activities on their survival.

Mike has been involved in wolf restoration and conservation throughout the United States for over 30 years. He served as the first leader for both the historic effort to restore the red wolf to the southeastern U.S. and the grey wolf to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. He has served on every Mexican wolf recovery since 1995. For many years Mike was a member of the IUCN Wolf Specialist Group before it joined with the Canid Specialist Group. In 1997 he and Ted Turner co-founded the Turner Endangered Fund and the Turner Biodiversity Divisions. The organizations now represent the world’s most significant private efforts to arrest the extinction crisis. Mike was elected to the Montana legislature in 2007 and will serve in the State Senate through at least December 2015.

Laura’s research focuses broadly on wildlife community ecology and multi-species conservation and management. She has studied coyotes in Alaska since 1999 and currently studies wolves, coyotes, red foxes and other carnivores in interior Alaska and northern Washington. Her research focuses on issues such as mesopredator release, predator-prey interactions, impacts of fur harvest and wolf control and impacts of climate change.

Girish is a Conservation Biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Trust, India, and a member of the Dhole Working Group of the CSG. His research has focussed on the distribution and population assessment of dholes, one of Asia’s most endangered wild canids. Through close collaboration with the Forest Department, Girish has played a pivotal role in advancing tangible landscape-scale conservation initiatives across the north-central Western Ghats of India, a global biodiversity hotspot. He has also researched the ecology of other wild canids and a range of large and small carnivores, contributing valuable insights into species conservation and management.

Nathan is a French movement ecologist at INRAE, Université de Toulouse, France. His primary research interest is the ecology and conservation of large mammals. His work encompasses both fundamental and applied research questions, and typically involves distribution and movement modelling. Since 2014, he has been studying the expansion of golden jackals in Europe with projects on the species movement ecology, habitat selection and feeding ecology. He is a member of the IUCN/SSC Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe since 2017 and Deputy Chair of the group since 2022.

Ryan obtained his Master’s degree in Wildlife Biology and Conservation and works on the ecology and conservation of wild canids in India. His research and collaborative projects focus on the intersection of ecology, demography and genetics of threatened species. His work uses a combination of molecular techniques, bioinformatics and population ecology and estimation for studying wild canids.

My name is Dionísia Segunda, and I am a wildlife conservationist from Angola, with a focus on the ecology, monitoring, and conservation of large carnivores, particularly the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus). My work integrates the use of camera traps to study the population dynamics of wild dogs in conservation areas in Angola. I also use GPS collars, drones, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to analyse species distribution, habitat use, and key threats. I develop data-driven conservation approaches, combining science, emerging technologies, and local knowledge. I am committed to strengthening long-term monitoring and the protection of threatened carnivores in Angola, contributing to evidence-based decision-making.

Eduardo has experience working with South American gray fox (chilla) and Darwin’s fox. He has worked on issues related to the human-canid conflict associated to small agriculture and the interactions of wild mammals, foxes included, with domestic dogs. He has recently been part of a team that discovered a new Darwin’s fox population, halfway between the previously known populations.

Devvrat Singh is a conservation biologist specialising in the ecology, behaviour and conservation of the Indian wolf (Canis lupus pallipes), with particular interests in wolf behaviour, cognition, human–wolf conflict and coexistence in human-dominated landscapes. He is the Founder of the ‘Indian Wolf Conservation Programme’, a long-term research-cum-conservation initiative focused on Indian wolves in northern India, primarily in intense human-wolf conflict regions. His work integrates species ecology and behaviour, community-based conservation, nature-based solutions and conservation policy.

His work largely centres on studying the conservation of large carnivores outside conventional protected areas. He has broader large-carnivore research and conservation experience across multiple government and non-government bodies.

Arjun Srivathsa is a wildlife biologist who works on the conservation ecology of large carnivores in India. His research work focuses on the ecology of wild canids, their interactions with humans, and the confluence of science and policy for carnivore conservation. His PhD at the University of Florida dealt with understanding the conservation ecology of Asiatic wild dog (dholes) at various spatial scales. Arjun is currently a Research Associate with Wildlife Conservation Society–India.

Zelealem worked in the Bale Mountains National Park in the 1980s, where he first encountered Ethiopian wolves. He attended the College of African Wildlife Management in Tanzania, and did his MSc and PhD at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), University of Kent. A Darwin Initiative project looking at the ecology of Ethiopian wolves and communal natural resource management practices in Menz provided the basis for his PhD at DICE. Zelealem is the Country Representative of the Frankfurt Zoological Society in Ethiopia and works on the conservation of Afroalpine areas, overseeing ecological monitoring, community-based conservation, and community-based tourism development activities in the highlands of north Ethiopia. He works closely with the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme.

Ester Rut is a wildlife biologist at the Natural Science Institute of Iceland and is responsible for the monitoring program of the Icelandic Arctic fox population. She has conducted Arctic fox surveys in Hornstrandir nature reserve in northeast Iceland since 1998, but that area is regarded as the most important sanctuary for the national population of Arctic foxes in Iceland. In 2010 she established The Arctic Fox Centre, with the idea of raising awareness about the species which has been heavily hunted and regarded as vermin for centuries in the country. Ester Rut is also responsible for the regional red list of Icelandic mammals, first released in 2018.

Bridgett vonHoldt is an associate professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. Her research focuses on evolutionary genomics of admixed species, hybrid zones, and consequence of natural selection on the regulatory genome. She has carried out extensive studies on wild and domesticated canines. Her research has significant conservation applications for endangered species like the red wolf and gray wolf of North America. She is the founder and director of the North American Canine Ancestry Project. She is also a co-founder and lead geneticist for the Gulf Coast Canine Project. She earned her PhD at UCLA under the mentorship of Robert Wayne.

Peter is director for Nature Management based in Norway. His research interests and expertise lie in large carnivore ecology and management, human-carnivore interactions and wolf social behaviour in particular. He is a current member of the IUCN Wolf Specialist group and conducts several large-carnivore research projects. He has also worked on brown bears (founder of the Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project), eagle owls and baleen whales. Research interests include population structure & dynamics, molecular ecology, behavioural ecology, multiple predator communities.

Tim Wacher is a Wildlife Biologist with the Zoological Society of London and is their current lead scientist on the Pan Sahara Wildlife Survey project. Tim has spent over 20 years working in aridlands conservation and has been involved in gazelle and Oryx reintroduction in Saudi Arabia as well as extensive fieldwork on antelopes and other Saharan wildlife in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Niger and Chad. As the founding board member of the Sahara Conservation Fund (SCF) he currently works as ZSL’s lead scientist on the Pan Sahara Wildlife Survey Project (PSWS) whose long-term goal is to improve the conservation status of the highly threatened yet poorly known wildlife of the Sahara and bordering Sahel regions of Africa. The work has provided valuable data reports on a variety of species including wild dogs as well as the golden jackal, Rüppell’s fox, pale fox and fennec fox.

Since 1988, Paula has been studying the arctic fox on Alaskan Islands. The earliest work, which constituted her Master’s degree, focused on sociobehaviour of the Pribilof Fox, an endemic subspecies of Alaska’s Pribilof Islands. Concerns over the welfare of the Pribilof fox have led to continued research emphasizing disease, human/wildlife conflict and conservation. She has also studied naturally occurring populations of arctic fox on Hall Island and the introduced Alopex on Shemya Island, the latter of which are now believed to have originated from Commander Island stock. Her previous work includes gray wolf and Channel Island fox. Current projects include African wild dog and side-striped jackal in Zambia.

Lisa Wolf is a canine researcher and consultant who has lived, worked with and studied wolves, coyotes, foxes, Australian dingoes and New Guinea dingoes (NGDs) for over 35 years. With a background in cognitive behavior, ecology, and conservation, her current area of interest is primitive and proto-domestic canids, in particular NGDs, and their role in human-canid coevolution and migration. Lisa helped establish the New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation and was integral to the 2016 expedition to Papua, New Guinea that was able to locate and collect biological samples from a viable wild population of NGDs.