Munawar Kholis

Munawar Kholis has over 14 years’ experience in Indonesian biodiversity conservation and environmental management in Indonesia’s tropical forests. Originally trained as a field veterinarian (2002), Kholis has significant experience in animal immobilization and handling, enclosure design and wildlife rescue center management, and has subsequently held senior technical positions in several national and international organization, including Forum HarimauKita, and Flora and Fauna International. He has leads WCS’s Indonesia Program work on increasing institutional capacity and management effectiveness for protected area authorities across the archipelago, as well as supporting the setting of WCS’s strategic direction on tiger conservation activities in Sumatra.

Since 2014 Kholis has been heavily engaged with establishing SMART patrol activities within Gunung Leuser National park, Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park and Bogani Nani Wartabone National Park in Sulawesi, building on successes in several SMART implementation projects in Sumatra, and is one of the leading Indonesian proponents of using tools such as SMART to increase protected area management effectiveness. Joining USAID in the LESTARI project in 2016 to work closely with conservation area mangement with the goal to improve the effectiveness of the conservation area management. Familiar with METT, the management effectiveness tracking tool and one of the facilitator in METT evaluation in Indonesia.Kholis also lead the Forum HarimauKita – sumatran tiger conservation forum and in collaboration with conservationist in Indonesia publising the SMART patrol guideline book series and human-tiger conlict mitigation guideline.