The Carpathian lynx - a subspecies of the Eurasian lynx. These majestic cats are a symbol of the wild and rugged landscapes of east and central Europe, where from country to country, they roam the mountains and forests. silently hunting for their prey. Over in France, the fate of these cats is hanging by just a thread. In fact if we do nothing, it's likely they will become locally extinct in just thirty years. Recent research from Nathan Huvier at Centre Athénas, a wildlife conservation organisation in the Jura mountains, has found that these beautiful cats are facing a rapid loss of genetic ..read more

Humans may be the world's top predator - but what happens when the tables are turned and we become the hunted. For many people around the world, the feeling of being watched stalked or even eaten by a predator such as a big cat is a terrifying reality. We're working to protect what wild cats we have left and even increase their numbers. But how do we balance this against the complexities of a world where increasingly people and predators live side by side. In this episode, we'll hear from Professor Adam Hart, author of “The Deadly Balance: People & Predators in a Crowded World”, and explor ..read more

Maybe you're driving on a road right now - even if you're not you're probably not that far from a road - because, roads are everywhere. It's hard to imagine a modern world without roads - and whilst they allow people like us to go almost anywhere in the world - they're also the great enabler for the many threats facing wild cats today such as deforestation, poaching and of course road-kill What we don't talk about though - is how the roads themselves divide our precious planet into millions of tiny pieces - irreversibly splitting-up populations of wildlife. So in this episode, we'll hear about ..read more

Singapore is one of the smallest countries on the planet, and its rapid rise from a small trading settlement to a bustling modern metropolis has destroyed 95% of its historical forests, driving the extinction of many species of animals. The islands were once home to the Malayan Tiger and the Indo-Chinese leopard and today, there is just one species of wild cat left in Singapore - the leopard cat - with around 50 individuals estimated to be in the wild. Whilst the leopard cat may be relatively common in some other countries, for Singaporeans, protecting this cat - their last wild cat - is incre ..read more

In Central & West Africa wildlife crime and corruption was rampant - and yet not a single individual had ever been prosecuted. It's in these fragile landscapes where lions are on the brink of extinction, leopards are under threat and other endangered species such as the western black rhino, gorillas and elephants could soon disappear. So when a young activist discovered the lack of any real enforcement or action against wildlife crime in Cameroon, he began a journey to become the first NGO in the region to directly fight wildlife crime & corruption. Almost twenty years later, they now ..read more

This episode is unlike any I've done before! We're taking a journey into computational science and mathematics and how the sand cat has inspired a new algorithm that could improve artificial intelligence, civil engineering, scheduling, smart routing, supply chains, and even aerospace engineering. My mind was blown when I read this research paper - and to be honest, it is an extraordinarily complex topic. But together we're gonna explore how the sand cat and the natural world around us is having an impact on some of the most cutting edge technology on our planet. We'll meet the sand cat, an eni ..read more

Mongolia - an epic expanse of rolling grasslands, unforgiving desert and rugged mountains. It's also the home of one of the more unusual wild cats on this planet - Pallas’s Cat or the manul. Since 2020, it's been been listed as "Least Concern" in the IUCN Red List - but if we look deeper, it's quickly evident that we do need to be concerned about the Pallas’s Cat - particularly in Mongolia. Today we'll meet the Italian scientist on the ground who's using innovative camera trapping techniques to discover the real story of the Pallas's Cat in the wild of Mongolia. Guest: Claudio Augugliaro, Wild ..read more

Borneo is a treasure trove of biodiversity and home to one of the oldest rainforests in the world. It’s also the epicentre of the palm oil industry and so these precious and fragile ecosystems have been ripped wide open, creating opportunity for disease transmission between wildlife, people and their domestic animals. So what does this mean for the endangered wild cats of Borneo like the Sunda Clouded Leopard and the Flat-Headed Cat? Guests: Sergio Guerrero (City University of Hong Kong) & Liesbeth Frías (Nanyang Technological University) Links: Health at the Edge Project ..read more

Over 6,000 kilometres from Moscow in the Far East of Russia is the remote and harsh habitat of the Amur Tiger - also known as the Siberian Tiger. It is one of the largest cats in the world, and there is estimated to be around 400 remaining in the wild. The largest threat for the Amur tiger is poaching - but there's really only one way to truly understand how and why poachers poach - and that's to talk to the poachers directly. And so American wildlife criminologist, Allison Skidmore had a proposal for her university - to go and live in these hunting communities in Far East Russia for months at ..read more

One day in 2012, Rajan Choudhary, a naturalist from Bardia National Park in Nepal was guiding an American tourist in his jeep through the park. Game drives are common in this park with the park home to elephants, tigers, dolphins and many other species. It was late and as they were returning to the hotel - all of a sudden, in the distance on the right-hand side, about ten metres into the forest - he saw this kind of light in the darkness. Now when you're driving at night, you might have noticed that the eyes of animals or people can reflect the light as tiny little beacons. So they stopped and ..read more