Biology and Conservation of Wild Felids

The editors utilize their fifty years of combined professional experience in the behaviour and ecology of wild felids to draw together a unique network of the world's most respected and knowledgeable experts on cats large and small. For the first time, this interdisciplinary field of research is brought together within a single volume, in a compendious exploration of wild cats that are as intriguing as they are beautiful and charismatic.

Beginning with a complete account of all thirty-six felid species, there follow eight comprehensive review chapters that span all the topics most relevant to felid conservation and biology, including evolution and systematics, felid form and function, genetic applications, behavioural ecology, management of conflict with people and control of international trade in felid species, conservation tools/techniques, ex situ management, and felid diseases. Nineteen detailed case studies then delve deeply into the very best species investigations worldwide, written by leading figures in the field. These chapters portray the unique attributes of the wild felids, describe their fascinating (and conflicting) relationship with humans, and create an unparalleled platform for future research and conservation measures. A final chapter analyses the requirements of, and interdisciplinary approaches to, practical conservation with cutting-edge examples of conservation science and action with implications that go far beyond the cat family.

The wild felids provide examples that will thrill the evolutionary biologist and theoretician, enthral the natural historian, and challenge the conservation biologist and wildlife manager. Anybody interested in evolutionary and behavioural biology, in mammals, in the environment, or in conservation will find much that is new and enriching in this book. It is also an unrivalled source of information for anyone with a serious interest in cats.

David W. MacDonald is Director and founder of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, where he is Professor of Wildlife Conservation and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. He is Visiting Professor at Imperial College and Liverpool Univesity and a Fellow of the royal Society of Edinburgh. A former A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University, he is a recipient of the American Society of Mammalogists Merriam Award for outstanding research in mammalogy.
Andrew J. Loveridge is the Kaplan Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall and a senior researcher at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit. Department of Zoology, Oxford University. Born and raised in Africa, he has spent the last ten years undertaking research on lions, and more recently leopards, in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe.