Luke Hunter is the Executive Director of Panthera, a New-York based conservation charity he helped to create in 2006 which is dedicated to the range-wide conservation of the world’s wild cat species. Prior to that, he headed the Great Cats Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society, and held positions in universities in Australia and South Africa. Hunter has worked on the ecology and conservation of carnivores in Africa since 1992. His doctorate and post-doctoral research developed methods to re-establish populations of cheetahs and lions in areas where they had been extirpated from Southern Africa. His current projects include assessing the effects of sport hunting and illegal persecution on leopards outside protected areas, developing a conservation strategy for lions across their African range, and the first intensive study of Persian leopards, striped hyaenas, wolves and the last surviving Asiatic cheetahs in Iran. Hunter has contributed to 80 scientific papers and popular articles, and has written five books. He is working on his sixth book A Field Guide to Carnivores of the World.