John Linnell’s research focuses on the complex relationships between humans and wildlife, ranging from sustainable harvest to reintroduction, population recovery and conflict management. He exploits multiple disciplinary approaches to ensure that relevant knowledge is available to inform and guide wildlife conservation policy. He has conducted research all across Europe, as well as in South and Central Asia and South America.

Currently, he is leading two large EU projects. The CoCo project is funded by Horizon Europe and is exploring the relationship between pastoralism and wildlife, while the Big_Picture project is developing the IT, statistical and procedural tools to leverage the most information out of camera trapping activities conducted by professional scientists, citizen scientists and private individuals. His keynote will address the issue of how successful conservation of potentially problematic wildlife should look in human dominated landscapes, including tricky questions like can we have to much “success”, and what actually do we mean by “coexisting with wildlife”.

Fun fact: “I appreciate wildlife encounters to nourish my soul, and encounters with my fellow humans to feed my intellectual curiosity”

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John-Linnell...
https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-0002-8370-5633
https://www.inn.no/finn-en-ansatt/john-linnell.html

Cristian-Remus Papp is a postdoctoral researcher in applied ecology and social-ecological niche (SESCarnivores), with a research focus on improving human-bear coexistence using a transdisciplinary approach. With experience spanning central and eastern Europe for over 20 years, he contributed to defining new approaches to large carnivores’ conservation, development of a bear-smart community and of an International Action Plan on the Conservation of Large Carnivores and Preserving Ecological Connectivity in the Carpathians, adopted by the Carpathian Convention, definition of the ecological network for large carnivores in the Carpathian Ecoregion.
Currently, he works at WWF Romania as Head of Wildlife and Landscapes Department, where he leads initiatives on iconic wildlife conservation such as large carnivores and landscape conservation approach. He is active in key global and national networks including IUCN, IENE, or Romania’s Large Carnivore Working Group, and teaches at Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca. His keynote will address Carnivore Ecology in a Changing World: Climate and Habitat Challenges, including perspectives in terms of large carnivores conservation and management, relevant for future decision making.

Fun fact: "My first bear encounter was at the age of 9, at around 200 m from the place of the Conference. Without knowing at that time how to behave in such a case, I was running as it seemed much faster than the bear towards the hotel."

Relevant links:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cristian-Remus-Papp...
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2631uQMAAAAJ&hl=en

Klemen Jerina a wildlife researcher specializing in the ecology, conservation, and management of large carnivores and ungulates across Eurasia, with a particular focus on Central Europe and the Balkans. His work has primarily focused on brown bears, wolves, red and roe deer, wild boar, chamois, and Barbary sheep. In recent years, his research has increasingly addressed applied topics such as human–wildlife conflict, artificial feeding, population and conservation management, and the use of selective hunting as a tool for managing both game and viable populations of protected species, such ad bown bear.
Klemen Jerina is employed as a full professor for Wildlife Ecology and Management at the University of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty, Department of Forestry, where he currently also serves as Vice-Dean of the Forestry Department. He is a founder of the Wildlife Ecology and Management research group.
Fun fact: My current research favorite is the edible dormouse: an ecologically significant yet non-charismatic species, particularly relevant in Slovenia. Studying it brings pure personal enjoyment, free from the complexities of public controversy.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Klemen-Jerina

Brady Mattsson is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Wildlife Biology and Game Management at BOKU University after starting there as a postdoctoral faculty member in 2017. He develops and tests tools to inform decisions involving biodiversity and sustainability at the science-policy-practice interface in several sectors including agriculture, forestry, hunting, and nature conservation in Central Europe. His methods expertise involves designing and conducting questionnaires, stakeholder workshops, Bayesian belief networks, multi-criteria decision analyses, and modeling dynamics in wildlife populations, especially in the framework of collaborative decision analysis.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brady-Mattsson

Dimitris Bormpoudakis is an interdisciplinary environmental scientist and conservation practitioner whose work focuses on the entangled processes of environmental management, including biodiversity, renewable energy, and agro-ecosystems. His work lies on the intersection between political ecology and the use of digital technologies for species and ecosystem monitoring and assessment. He studied Biology with a Master’s degree in Ecology at the Department of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He received his PhD specializing in Biodiversity Management from the School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, in 2016.

Dimitris has been involved in more than 20 EU and national projects related to conservation governance and ecosystem monitoring and assessment. Since moving back to Greece 2023, he is employed by Callisto - Environmental Organization for Wildlife and Nature and the BEYOND Centre of Excellence in Earth Observation and Remote Sensing at the National Observatory of Athens. Currently, he is leading a work package for the CoCo project (Horizon Europe) which is critically reviewing emerging tools and technologies for rapid assessment and management of the wildlife-livestock interface.

His keynote revolves around the use of green and digital technologies for human-carnivore coexistence. Taking a critical approach, Dimitris’ presentation will look beyond technophilic approaches and will address some of the key requirements for the successful operationalisation of conservation technologies (“Camera Traps, AI and Drones”) by farmers, livestock breeders, hunters, and other land users in rural areas of Europe.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aiP9lDgAAAAJ&hl=en
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dimitris-bormpoudakis-37630225/

Fun fact: “One of my hobbies is field recording, i.e., recording the sounds of the world. A music label has released one CD (remember those…) of my Greek frog recordings from Lake Kerkini in Greece.”