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Conservation Dinner Series: Jim Sanderson of Small Wild Cat Conservation Foundation joins us in the elephant room after dinner to give a talk about small cats. The conservation dinner series is complementary to all dinner guests.

If you would like to just go to this presentation, please reserve dinner by selecting the date of the lecture on the booking page. Dinner starts at 7:00 PM.

There are some very famous cats in the world: lions, leopards, cheetahs and jaguars among them. The characteristic shared by all these famous cats is that they are big. But there are many smaller cats as well (33 species to be exact) and many of them face similar threats to their larger cousins.

That’s why Jim Sanderson founded the Small Wild Cat Conservation Foundation. Besides running his foundation, Jim is also the Program Manager for Wild Cat Conservation at Global Wildlife Conservation. In his decades of work studying and conserving small cats, Jim was part of the team that captured and radio-collared the very first Andean cat in 2004. With Chinese colleagues, Jim also got the first pictures of the Chinese mountain cat in the wild.

Join us in the Elephant Room after dinner to hear Jim Sanderson speak of the many trials and tribulations faced by the world’s small cats and what he, and all of us, can do to help.

About the Speaker:

Jim Sanderson received a Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in 1976. Jim is the Program Manager for Wild Cat Conservation at Global Wildlife Conservation.  He is the founder and director of the Small Wild Cat Conservation Foundation, a member of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group, a review board member of the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, and a Fellow of Wildlife Conservation Network.

Jim’s mission is to ensure the survival of small wild cats and their natural habitats worldwide. This mission is achieved by working with local partners around the world to identify and mitigate threats to the world’s small wild cats.  In 1996 Jim used radio-telemetry to better understand habitat fragmentation and landscape connectivity, and conservation issues of Guignas (Leopardus guigna) in Chile.  With Bolivian and Chilean colleagues, Jim captured and radio-collared the first Andean cat in May 2004. He has also used camera photo-traps to survey wildlife populations and monitor biodiversity in South America, Africa, Asia, and SE Asia.  Jim’s photograph of the Andean cat appeared in the February 2000 issue of National Geographic. With Chinese colleagues, Jim got the first pictures of the Chinese mountain cat in the wild. He has written four books and published more than 120 peer-reviewed journal articles.