Research Summary
Emas National Park, Brazil — The vast and beautiful grasslands of this national park are home to an astounding diversity of large carnivores, including rare pumas, jaguars, maned wolves, and crab-eating foxes. A World Heritage Site and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, Emas serves as an important reservoir for these threatened populations, as well as for smaller carnivore species. For the last 15 years, Drs. Leandro Silveira and Anah Jácomo, along with their field teams of expert field biologists, veterinarians, and conservationists, have been studying the carnivore community of Emas to understand their ecology and conservation status in and around the park.
You can help them continue their research here, now focusing on jaguars, determining the population size, range, habits, and habitat needs of these magnificent and fleet predators to create the basis for conservation strategies in the region.
Meet the Scientists
Dr. Leandro Silveira
NGO Associação para a Conservação dos Carnivoros Neotropicais;
Jaguar Conservation Fund
Leandro Silveira, born in 1970, has a Ph.D. in Animal Biology from the University of Brasilia (2004) and an M.A. in Ecology from the University of Goiás (1999). He is President of the Jaguar Conservation Fund, a member of the Cat Specialist Group of the IUCN (World Conservation Union), and has been coordinator of the Ecology and Conservation Project of the Carnivores in Emas National Park since 1994. He has been leading Earthwatch volunteers in the field since 2001. Leandro also coordinates jaguar research projects in the Amazon, Pantanal and Caatinga (a semi-arid biome in the northeast of Brazil) regions.
Dr. Anah T. A. Jácomo
Jaguar Conservation Fund
Anah Tereza de Almeida Jácomo, born in 1969, holds a Ph.D. in Animal Biology from the University of Brasilia (2004) and an M.A. in Ecology from the University of Goiás. She has been field manager of the carnivore project at Emas National Park since 1994; she is also deeply involved in the studies of the ecology, management and conservation of tapirs and peccaries in the park and surrounding landscape. Her Ph.D. thesis in ENP focused on white-lipped peccaries, the main prey of the jaguar, and was conducted in parallel with Leandro’s thesis on jaguars (the main predator of the peccary).