Dr Urs Breintenmoser is a carnivore ecologist and former senior scientist at the University of Bern and the former director of the Foundation KORA – Carnivore Ecology and Wildlife Management. I have been involved in research projects on carnivore ecology for 40 years and have supervised projects in the frame of the Swiss carnivore projects. My main field of interest is the reintroduction of Eurasian lynx and the re-integration of large carnivores into human dominated landscapes. He is the co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commissions Cat Specialist Group (IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group), a world-wide network of cat experts surveying the conservation status of all felid species.
Dr Christine Breitenmoser-Würsten is a wildlife biologist with long-term experience in carnivore ecology and conservation. She is involved in long-term ecological field studies of Eurasian lynx in Switzerland. As a co-founder of the Swiss based non-profit organisation KORA (Carnivore Ecology and Wildlife Management), she has worked since the beginning as administrative director and programme coordinator. KORA is commissioned to monitor large carnivore populations in Switzerland by the Federal Government and conducts solution-oriented research projects contributing to the resolution of human-wildlife conflicts in different parts of Europe. She is the co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commissions Cat Specialist Group (IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group), a world-wide network of cat experts surveying the conservation status of all felid species.
Prof Sarah Durant is focused on delivering novel scientific research relevant to the conservation and management of large carnivores in Africa. She is Professor at the Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London and head of the Africa Range-wide Cheetah Conservation Initiative. Her research is focused on developing scientific solutions to conservation problems, informed by behavioural and population ecology, and with a strong interdisciplinary component. She is a Project Leader of the Serengeti Cheetah Project, the longest ongoing study of wild cheetahs since 1991. Sarah is a Program Leader of the African Range-wide Cheetah Conservation Initiative (previously the Range Wide Conservation Program for Cheetah and African Wild Dogs) since 2007.
Leili Khalatbari’s research interests span conservation biology, conservation genetics, ecology, wildlife and ecosystem management and ecological modelling. She is a post-doc researcher at CIBIO-InBIO, University of Porto, Portugal where she is working at BIODESERTS (Biodiversity of Deserts and Arid Regions). Over the past few years, she has been mainly studying status, habitat use, diet, landscape connectivity and genetic of Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus) and used these data for proposing conservation measures to improve the management of Asiatic cheetahs.
Dr Andrew Kitchener is Principal Curator of Vertebrates and specialises in research on mammals, especially carnivorans at National Museum of Scotland. Before this he was a researcher and field assistant at the BBC Natural History Unit, working on the series Supersense. He is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh and an Honorary Lecturer in the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow and a member of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group and the IUCN Equid Specialist Group. In 2020 Dr Kitchener was appointed to the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission to advise the Scottish government on animal welfare issues.
Dr Patricia Macdonald BSc FRSE FSA(Scot) FRSA HonFRSGS is an artist-photographer and a researcher and academic in environmental history, perception and iconography, whose experience includes museums, government agencies, NGOs, and, as an Honorary Fellow at Edinburgh University, course organising in cultural landscape studies. Her boundary-crossing environmental aerial imagery is exhibited, published, and held in public and private collections internationally.
Prof Kaveh Madani is a globally recognised environmental scientist, educator, and activist, working on complex human-natural systems at the interface of science, policy, and society. He is currently the Director of UNU-INWEH and a Research Professor at the City University of New York’s Remote Sensing Earth Systems Institute (CUNY CREST) and previously served as the Deputy Head of Iran’s Department of Environment, Vice President of the UN Environment Assembly Bureau, and Chief of Iran’s Department of Environment’s International Affairs and Conventions Center.
Will McCallum is co-Executive Director of Greenpeace UK. Prior to this, as Head of Oceans at Greenpeace UK from 2015-22 Will led campaigns on sustainable fisheries, including working alongside low impact fishing communities; he founded and led their international 30×30 campaign geared to create ocean sanctuaries in international and national waters. Before that, he oversaw the launch of their first campaigns on plastic, helping reshape the global conversation about plastic waste away from litter to being one about reducing production, including authoring a book, How to Give Up Plastic, published by Penguin in 2018 and since translated into 12 languages.
Dr Stephane Ostrowski is the Senior Technical Advisor of Temperate Asia Region & Associate Director of Wildlife Health Program, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), New York. He participated actively in the conservation of the Iranian cheetah and its prey between 2007 and 2017, supporting the technical development of Iranian conservationists. Before he was Director of the Mammal and Veterinary Departments, program manager for the conservation of the Arabian oryx, chief veterinarian for zoological collections and field veterinary interventions at the National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC), Taif, Saudi Arabia. He has worked in West and Central Asia for the past 30 years.
Dr Chris Walzer is the Executive Director of Health at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. He is a board-certified wildlife veterinarian, tenured professor of Conservation Medicine at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria. Author of more than 130 peer-reviewed research publications and numerous book chapters, lecturing widely on health and conservation. Chris has an internationally recognised diverse One Health expertise, working on the human-livestock-wildlife interfaces, in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. During the past decades he has also worked repeatedly in Iran supporting cheetah and onager conservation. Chris is the recipient of several research and service awards most notably the Distinguished Environmentalist Award from the Mongolian Ministry of Nature and Environment for contributions to the conservation of Mongolia’s rare and endangered species.
With Music by
Omid Amiri was born and grow up in Iran. He started music by playing piano from an early age and was trained in traditional and folk Iranian music and Western Classical music. He fell in love with Jazz which was almost non-existing in Iran at the time and followed his passion for Jazz saxophone through self-teaching till the age of 18 when he met a British saxophonist in Tehran who mentored him. His band marked the first Jazz performance since the revolution in Iran which was praised by many leading critics. He moved to the UK where he met Tony Kofi, British leading Jazz saxophonist who became his private teacher and supporter. Omid then immigrated to Paris where he performed widely in France and Europe with musicians from diverse music traditions and backgrounds ranging from various Jazz genres such as Funk, Fusion, Afrobeat, Free-Jazz, as well as Brazilian music, and folk. During this time, he also graduated from ARPEJ Music School Paris. Omid also teaches saxophone and Jazz theory. He is currently based in London.
