Co-founders of the Wilderness & Wildlife Conservation Trust's (WWCT).

The WWCT Leopard Project, has been working to improve the understanding of the leopard in Sri Lanka for the past 15 years. Their research has created and maintains an on-going database of leopard distribution data in the country and has highlighted the importance of unprotected areas and especially small, seemingly isolated forest fragments, to future leopard conservation.

A key aspect of understanding leopard ecology at the population level is to investigate finer scale patterns and processes in a variety of habitats across the island nation. They will talk about valuing the leopard in Sri Lanka and also reveal some of their novel on-going work in the Central Highlands tea country. Also to be touched on will be their work of quantifying leopard mortality, threats and incidents across the island and hte need to promotte human leopard co-existence.

Dr Kittle is a zoologist who in addition to coducting research on the Sri Lankan leopard has studied the behaviour and spatial ecology of large carnivores across systems and continents including wolves in North America and lions and hyenas in Easern Africa.

Anjali Watson is an exologist whose work includes examining the factors that underlie the island-wide distribution and mortality of the Sri Lankan leopard. She has also worked with primates in South America and Sri Lanka and worked alongside Andrew on his other carnivore research.

Both Andrew and Anjali have been members of the IUCN's Cat Specialist Group since 2002.  Their research has been published internationally and their Sri Lankan leopard study is what informs the IUCN's Global Red List of threatended species.