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Brett Westwood stalks the leopard... and finds him on Exmoor. With Guy Balme of Panthera, Gordon Buchanan who filmed the urban leopards of Mumbai, Desmond Morris and Rick Minter.

Brett Westwood stalks the leopard.. and finds him on Exmoor. With Di McRobb who may have seen a leopard while out walking, Guy Balme of Panthera, Gordon Buchanan, who filmed the urban leopards of Mumbai for Planet Earth, zoologist and author of Leopard Desmond Morris, Rick Minter, author of Big Cats - Facing Britain's Wild Predators and Danny Reynolds, Director of Exmoor Zoo.

First broadcast in a longer form on 14th November 2017
Original producer : Beth O'Dea.
Archive producer : Andrew Dawes

Available now

28 minutes

Last on

Sun 24 Sep 2023 06:35

Dr Guy Balme

is the Director of Panthera’s , overseeing Panthera’s . Guy was the first recipient of Panthera’s Kaplan Graduate Awards Program, the world’s only scholarship program devoted to supporting outstanding young biologists in the field of cat conservation.

In 2009, through the Kaplan Awards Program, Guy completed his doctorate on the conservation biology of a nominally protected leopard population in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He was instrumental in impacting new legislation that regulates trophy hunting of leopards in South Africa, and helped to revise the provincial protocol for managing damage-causing leopards outside protected wildlife areas. These efforts led to a dramatic recovery of the region’s leopard population and Guy is currently working with several African governments to implement similar interventions in other parts of leopard range.

Gordon Buchanan

Gordon has made his name in British wildlife filmmaking, both as a cameraman and a presenter. He filmed leopards in Mumbai for Planet Earth IIΒ Gordon and has appeared in numerous Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ series including: , The Polar Bear Family & Me, The Bear Family and Me, and challenging expeditions such as Lost Land Of the Tiger, Land of the Lost Wolves and most recently Wild Burma: Nature’s Lost Kingdom.

Rick Minter

Rick Minter is the author of , which looks atΒ claims of sightings of large cats resembling panthers, pumas, and lynx in Britain.

He also runs talks and workshops to discuss big cats and the issues they present and pursued sightings with Britain’s most experienced trackers. He has glimpsed and sensed some of these animals for himself, but wonders on how many more occasions they have seen him.

Desmond Morris

Desmond Morris is a world renowned zoologist, author and surrealist painter. Over his career Desmond has been curator of mammals at London Zoo, a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and written over 50 books about both humans and animals, famously including The Naked Ape and the Human Zoo. He is the author of Leopard for the Reaktion Books Animal series.

Danny Reynolds

Danny Reynolds is director of Exmoor Zoo. It began life back in 1993 when he and his wife Lynn took over a bird garden being run on the site. One of the Zoo's most popular exhibits is the mythological Exmoor beast.

Danny said: "The romanticism and the folklore associated with the possibility of a big cat or carnivore being out there has stimulated lots of stories and media interest. Even today we get asked if we have our big cats (black leopards or puma) in their enclosures or if they have escaped, usually by people phoning in after they have had a close encounter with an unusual animal in the area."

Broadcasts

  • Tue 14 Nov 2017 11:00
  • Mon 20 Nov 2017 21:00
  • Sun 24 Sep 2023 06:35

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