Cheetah Researcher and International Conservationist Dr. Laurie Marker Announces Dates for Spring 2017 U.S. Lecture Tour

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Cheetah Researcher and International Conservationist Dr. Laurie Marker Announces Dates for Spring 2017 U.S. Lecture Tour

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 24, 2017) – Dr. Laurie Marker, Founder and Executive Director of Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) and one of the world’s leading experts on the cheetah, today announced dates for her upcoming, five-week speaking tour in the United States.

Traveling from her CCF field headquarters in Namibia, Dr. Marker will begin her U.S. engagements with a week in residence as an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Dr. Marker will interact with students and professors during the week of March 27-31, 2017, as a guest lecturer and on March 28, she will give an on-campus public talk in the school’s Biotechnology Building, “The Amazing Race… to Save the Cheetah.” In this presentation, Dr. Marker will chronicle her 40-plus-year career that has taken her around the globe several times in efforts to save the world’s fastest land mammal from extinction.

Immediately following her week at Cornell, Dr. Marker will travel to Atlanta, Georgia, for a fundraising event with special guest Jim Fowler of television’s legendary Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom at the Golf Club of Georgia in Alpharetta, Georgia. At the event, Dr. Marker will speak and bestow CCF Silver Medallions on Fowler and John Wilson, a CCF Trustee and longtime supporter, and Dante Stephensen, a well-known Atlanta businessman and former owner of Dante’s Down the Hatch, for their many important contributions to cheetah conservation.

On April 5, Dr. Marker will appear at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden’s dinner honoring local resident Cathryn Hilker, Founder of the Cincinnati Zoo Cat Ambassador Program. Dr. Marker and Hilker have known each other for 30 years and have a shared passion for cheetah conservation. Cathryn Hilker and her late husband Carl were integral to the development of CCF in Namibia and played an instrumental role in acquiring some of the land where CCF’s Field Research & Education Centre is now based. Dr. Marker will give a talk about cheetahs and present Cathryn Hilker with the 2017 CCF Cheetah Conservation Award, marking the first occasion on which this honor will be given.

In Tucson, Arizona, Dr. Marker will make a presentation and hold a Q&A session following a screening of an extended cut of a Born to Explore with Richard Wiese episode featuring Dr. Marker and CCF to be televised on PBS later this year. At this “Wild About Cheetahs” event held at The Loft Cinema, Dr. Marker will also sell and autograph copies of her book, A Future for Cheetahs.

On April 19, Dr. Marker will speak at Happy Hollow Zoo in San Jose, California. She will be joined by a canine animal ambassador that represents the livestock guarding dogs Dr. Marker introduced to Africa in 1994 that help protect cheetahs from conflict with farmers. On April 22, Dr. Marker will host another public talk at the Living Desert Zoo in Palm Desert, California, to honor the cheetah on Earth Day. Later that evening, she will host a fundraising event, “Sundowner in the Desert,” featuring an ambassador cheetah at a private residence.

Next, Dr. Marker will present back-to-back events in New Jersey. At 11 a.m. on Thursday, April 27, Dr. Marker will address 200 young learners at the Liberty Science Center in Liberty, New Jersey, on the role livestock guarding dogs play in cheetah conservation, “The Human-Wildlife Conflict: How Dogs Are Saving Cats.” In the evening, Dr. Marker will co-host a fundraising event with television host Richard Wiese at Liberty House Restaurant in Jersey City, New Jersey. The pair will speak about the need for stepped up conservation efforts to save the species and screen the extended cut of Born to Explore featuring Dr. Marker and CCF.

Dr. Marker will conclude her public speaking tour with a presentation at the Wildlife Conservation Network Spring Expo on the campus of Dominican University of California in San Rafael, California, on April 29, 2017.

Dr. Marker will visit several other cities on this tour for private events and meetings, including Palo Alto, Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Los Angeles, California; New York, New York; Denver, Colorado; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Washington, District of Columbia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Jacksonville, Florida.

Dr. Marker is a zoologist, research scientist and conservation biologist considered to be one of the world’s leading experts on the cheetah and human-predator conflict mitigation. Earning her DPhil at Oxford University, she has spent more than 40 years in the field studying cheetah biology, genetics, ecology and socio-economic issues related to conservation. She is credited with successfully mitigating conflict between farmers and cheetahs in Namibia and saving the lives of hundreds of cheetahs and other large carnivores with innovative, non-lethal predator control strategies, including the use of livestock guarding dogs and the advancement of communal and commercial conservancies.

Dr. Marker has received many awards in recognition including the 2015 Ulysses S. Seal Award for Innovation in Conservation, a 2015 E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Pioneer Award and a 2015 Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal. Dr. Marker is also the recipient of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, the International Conservation Caucus Foundation’s Good Steward Award, the Tech Museum’s Intel Environmental Prize, and is a two-time finalist for the Indianapolis Prize, the top award in species conservation. She was named a “Hero for the Planet” by Time magazine and has been featured in Smithsonian magazine as well as The Tonight Show, Good Morning America and the Today Show.

About Cheetah Conservation Fund
Founded in Namibia, Africa, in 1990, Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) is the global leader in research and conservation of cheetahs dedicated to saving cheetahs in the wild. Dr. Laurie Marker, CCF’s Founder and Executive Director, is an American zoologist considered to be one of the world’s foremost experts on cheetah biology, ecology and conservation. She developed CCF’s holistic conservation strategy, which considers the needs of people, wildlife and the land and is credited with increasing the wild cheetah population in Namibia by almost 50 percent. CCF’s long-term studies monitor and analyze the factors affecting cheetah survival in the wild, and the findings provide the basis for developing conservation policies and education programs that have reached more than 450,000 Namibian farmers and school learners. CCF is a registered non-profit foundation in Namibia, Canada, the UK and the U.S., where it is listed as a “Four Star Charity” by Charity Navigator, recognizing sound fiscal management and commitment to accountability and transparency.

For more information about CCF, please visit www.cheetah.org

MEDIA CONTACT:
Susan Yannetti
susan@cheetah.org
202.716.7756

OR

Paula Martin
paulam@cheetah.org
817-851-4070