Tabitha Reed

I am currently a graduate student working towards my Masters in Biology through the Advanced Inquiry Program (AIP). The AIP is a project-based degree offered through a collaborative partnership between Miami University and San Diego Zoo Global. Its aim is to build conservation biologists equipped to focus on contemporary and challenging issues. My passion and degree focus on the conservation and ecological issues facing the seven big cats around the world. My mission is to find and critically analyze strategies for helping their populations in the wild, especially through reducing human-big cat conflict. My work and research is pointed at understanding how human behavior change can lead to tolerance and how the communication around big cats is interpreted by various communities through their cultural, religious, ethnic, and/or political lenses. I strongly believe the key to accomplishing my mission of driving action to further conservation to ensure human and big cat coexistence will come through research, hands-on experience, education, intervention, and understanding. My vision is to facilitate big cat conservation through public collaboration, environmental education, and biodiversity preservation. Together we can end human-big cat conflict, and protect these species as well as the people who live alongside them.