What can the ghosts of the Amur leopards past teach us about their future?

In this episode, we will be discussing what historical records of Amur leopards in Seoul, Korea, at the end of the 19th century, can tell us about the future of large carnivores in major urban centers with a high human population density. We're joined by PhD Researcher Joshua Powell whose research investigates opportunities and challenges for the transboundary conservation of the Endangered Amur tiger, leopard, and other large carnivores in north-east Asia. Joshua is a visiting researcher with the Tiger and Leopard Conservation Fund in Korea (KTLCF) and has been a visiting research student in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Seoul National University. He is a National Geographic Explorer and one of the faces of WWF’s Voices campaign on global biodiversity. In this episode, we will be focusing on his paper on the historical context of Urban Leopards in the Early Anthropocene From Seoul, Korea. His paper explored the socio-cultural, political, and ecological factors that may have facilitated human-leopard co-occurrence in an urban landscape and the factors that eventually led to the leopards' extirpation.