Dr José F. González-Maya

José F. González-Maya is a Costa Rican/Colombian conservation biologist working as Professor-Researcher for Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Lerma (México), Scientific Director for ProCAT Colombia/Internacional as well as Co-Chair of the IUCN SSC Small Carnivore Specialist Group. He holds a BSc in Biology from Universidad Latina de Costa Rica, a MSc in Conservation from CATIE (Costa Rica) and a PhD in Sciences from UNAM-Mexico. José´s experience has focused on understanding and proposing solutions to complex conservation issues, especially carnivores, with experience in different countries of Latin America. He has worked for more than 15 years on HWC research, management and prevention for multiple species and regions, especially focusing on jaguar and puma and more recently on Andean Bears; he has designed HWC prevention programs and attention and primary mitigation protocols in varied regions such as Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Andean region of Colombia or the Talamanca mountains in Costa Rica. He is one of the founders of the Jaguar Friendly ecolabel for production systems that secure jaguar habitat by reducing conflict and improving production practices, currently with pilots on shade-grown coffee in Costa Rica and Colombia. José received the Future for Nature award (Netherlands) and the William T. Hornaday and Oliver P. Pearson awards from the American Society of Mammalogists (USA) for his research and conservation practice on wildlife in his native countries.