Student training in wildlife conservation
At Wild Cats Brazil we are aware of the need to train the new generation of wild cat biologists and conservation. This is why we are supervising the theses and dissertations of a number of students, both graduates and undergraduates. Many of these projects are dealing with ecology and conservation of small cats. We also have projects focusing on other wildlife and on domestic animals living in protected areas. Besides this, we also have students coming from abroad to do internships and get hands-on experience on small cat research. Despite our limited funding, we consider training students a very important priority for long term small cat conservation.
Project leader Dr. Tadeu Gomes de Oliveira with students (from right to left): Diogo Gomes da Silva, Breno Campelo Lima, Vitor Emmanoel, and Lester Fox Rosales.
We currently have the following graduate students doing their respective Masters degree theses with us:
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Breno Campelo Lima (focusing on Northern Tiger Cats and Pampas Cats).
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Lester Alexander Fox Rosales (focusing on Northern Tiger Cats and Jaguarundis).
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Laís dos Santos Everton (focusing on medium and large mammals).
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Rayana Diniz da Silva (focusing on medium and large mammals).
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Diogo Gomes da Silva (focusing on crab-eating and hoary foxes).
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Renata Soraya Pereira (focusing on domestic animals within protected areas).
Undergraduate students Jan Geisler and Richard Robold came from Hogeschool Van Hall Laresntein University of Applied Science in the Netherlands. They came to Brazil to learn field techniques such as camera trapping as well as how to analyze data from field studies targeting small cats.
They will both come back to their university with the training needed to set up a field study, collect the data, and analyze it.
