Natural History Museum, Oxford, 17th-20th September 2007
A week after arriving in the UK, I traveled to Oxford for the Felid Biology and Conservation Conference. This was held at the Natural History Museum on Parks Road. The conference was organized by the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit in Oxford and sponsored by the Panthera Foundation.
The first morning opened with the Plenary sessions. There were fascinating talks by David Macdonald and Craig Packer. The afternoon consisted of “Ecology” talks, where there were presentations on lion demography studies, ecology of jaguar populations and much more. The second day focused on “Felids and People”, and most of the talks focused on conflict issues with predators worldwide. It was interesting to learn that whether it’s a lion, puma, cheetah, jaguar or tiger – the issues facing them are pretty much all the same. There were some excellent talks on the last day on “Conservation and Management” which were all greatly informative. The day ended with brief updates on “Tools and Methods” used for Felid studies.
The conference was excellent overall and a perfect start to my DPhil here in Oxford. I enjoyed the varied talks focusing on studies taking place all over the world