Dr. Melissa Arias is an Ecuadorian conservation scientist specializing in wildlife trafficking, human-wildlife coexistence, and big cat conservation. She is currently the Wildlife Trade Specialist at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). Previously, Dr. Arias was WWF’s Amazon Jaguar Coordinator and worked as a consultant for CITES and CMS, promoting international collaboration to combat jaguar trafficking. She holds a PhD in Zoology from the University of Oxford, where she researched the illegal jaguar trade in Latin America, and a Master’s in Environmental Management from Yale University, focused on the ecology of Sumatran tigers as smaller felids in Indonesia.