Working in conservation can get a bit sad, especially if your job involves measuring in meticulous detail the decline of ecosystems and environments. Fortunately, it’s not hard to also be hopeful for the state of wild nature when there are so many awesome, inspiring people in the world, hammering away at difficult problems. So while conservation doesn’t always work, here are some times it really has–and the people behind those breakthroughs.
My motivation in creating this list isn’t to propagate a lone wolf stereotype. Ultimately, I don’t think that helps anybody much, least of all our planet. Conservation in the 21st century increasingly has be a collaborative endeavour if it is to make a dent in some of the grand challenges facing the environment. Everyone listed here was undoubtedly supported by a network of many other passionate, brilliant people along the way– and these are the kind of people that would be the first to admit that (working for nature makes you humble!).
Rather, I hope this list goes some way in showing — proving even — that one person truly can make a difference in slowing extinctions. No matter what your background, expertise or interests are. This list has journalists, hackers, lawyers, scientists and more–and it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. I hope you read this as an antidote to hopelessness in an age of extinction–and decide today to get involved in trying to make a difference yourself. To take action in defence of nature and the species we share our planet with.
Let me know who I’ve disgracefully missed.
Carl Jones
Now a chief scientist at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, and staunch advocate of hands-on conservation, Carl Jones is also arguably the one person alive to have prevented the most species extinctions. Through a combination of hand-rearing of chicks, extermination of predators, and supplementary feeding with mice, he brought the Mauritius Kestrel–down to just four individuals left on Earth in 1974–back from brink. Today there are hundreds.
He did the same with four other bird species numbering fewer than twelve known wild individuals, including the pink pigeon, the echo parakeet, and the Rodrigues fody and warbler. Up to 2016, an insane six of the 63 mammal, birds and mammal species downgraded in threat status on the IUCN Red List have been driven by Carl Jones.
Rhett Butler
Rhett Butler is the CEO of the environmental journalism outlet Mongabay. He is also a personal hero of mine. Rhett started Mongabay in 1999 and for years wrote thousands of articles on his own, bringing global attention to neglected environmental issues. Today, Mongabay is published in over 30 languages and boasts millions of monthly viewers, with bureaus in Indonesia, India and Latin America. Rhett, and writers at Mongabay more generally, have broken numerous stories that have had considerable real-world impact, from helping stop the illegal harvest of Rosewood in Madagascar following a military coup, to exposing and contributing to the demise of a company that marketed itself as sustainably growing cacao in the Peruvian Amazon, but was actually clear-cutting rainforest.
Edicson Parra
Edicson is a Colombian botanist and conservationists who has discovered over twenty species of orchid. Through his orchid surveys, he has contributed to the conservation of imperilled cloud forests, from helping protect a mountaintop ecosystem from conversion by a mining company, to preventing the takeover of the “orchid garden of Eden” by a luxury housing project.
Patricia Wright
A world-leading primatologist, Patricia Wright has spent some 30 years studying the lemurs of Madagascar’s Ranomafana National Park. She spearheaded the establishment of this park after she rediscovered the greater bamboo lemur, long thought to be extinct. It was living in the forest alongside an entirely new lemur species, the golden bamboo lemur. She recounts the amazing tale of Ranomafana’s inception in her book, For the Love of Lemurs.
Ilena Zanella
Based on the data collected by Ilena and her team, the coastal wetlands of Golfo Dulce off Costa Rica were declared a Scalloped Hammerhead Shark Sanctuary in May 2018, including a 4,000Ha no take zone that defends the shark during its critical juvenile life stage.
Norman Myers
There is one scientific paper that has arguably done more to help defend imperilled wildlife than any other. Published in Nature in 2000, in “Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities”, Myers and authors argue that the inability to assist all species puts a “premium on priorities”–and that the mother of priorities is biodiversity hotspots. Now thought to comprise just 2.3% of the Earths land surface, but to contain nearly 43% of bird, mammal, reptile and amphibian species as endemics, there are 35 hotspots around the globe which are characterised by enormous but quickly disappearing diversity.
The biodiversity hotspot concept has formed the bedrock of investment strategies for major international efforts to stem biodiversity loss. Conservation International have used it as a blueprint to direct the spending of literally billions of dollars in a cost-effective manner.
Afroz Shah
The man behind the world’s biggest beach clean up. Annoyed at the metres of washed up and decomposing waste on his city of Versova’s beach in India, Afroz and his 84 yr old neighbour decided to do something about it. The movement grew. Now some 8000 tonnes of plastic have been removed and Aroz is India’s man of the year…
Hansjörg Wyss
I’ve often thought that what conservation really needs is a few more billionaire philanthropists to invest their dosh on effective conservation interventions in Earth’s biodiversity hotspots. This is part of what Hansjörg Wyss, the Swiss entrepreneur–who made his fortunes in medicine–has recently pledged to do. One billion dollars towards land and ocean conservation over ten years. To put it into perspective, that’s roughly the annual spending that would be needed in the next decade to reduce the extinction risk of every single globally threatened bird species. Big money. Let’s hope it’s spent effectively.
Bayarjargal Agvaantseren
Bayarjargal led an enormous campaign to stop mining firms destroying a critical habitat for snow leopards. She persuaded governments to cancel 37 mining contracts in South Gobi Desert and to classify the area as a nature reserve.
Leonardo DiCaprio
I’m not a huge fan of celebrity culture. The world would be a much better place if people focused a little bit less on the Kardashians and a little bit more on getting out into nature. That said, Leonardo Dicaprio embodies what you would want in a celebrity. For 20 yrs, his foundation has supported over two hundred environmental projects across 50 countries, donating over 100 million in grants.
Leela Hazzah
Executive director and co-founder of the charity Lion Guardians, Conservation Biologist Leela Hazzah is heavily responsible for developing a conservation model that has reduced lion killings in the Amboseli-Tsavo ecosystem of southern Kenya by 99%.
David Kwarteng & Caleb Ofori-Boateng
In 2010, David and Caleb founded Herp Ghana, a charity focused on preserving imperilled reptiles and amphibians. One area of their work focuses on preserving the critically endangered Togo Slippery frog, an EDGE species once thought to be extinct. Three hundred or so Slippery frogs are left alive today–they are found in the rivers and forest fragments fringing a single mountaintop community in the Togo-Volta Highlands along the Ghana-Togo border.
Threatened by logging, habitat destruction and hunting, David and Caleb and their team worked with the Amedzokpe community to highlight the importance of the Togo Slippery frog, through campaigns and engagement strategies such as Soccer for Frogs. This culminated in the community establishing the only protected area in the whole of Africa focused on the conservation of an amphibian.
Patrick Duggen
Patrick Duggen was at the heart of one of the most historic cases against illegal wildlife trafficking in US history. The case involved Virginia-based hardwood flooring retailer Lumber Liquidators Ltd., who were importing timber illegally harvested in the far east of Russia–home of the last remaining Siberian tigers and Amur leopards on earth. Patrick followed a trail of environmental degradation and corrupt transactions that would eventually lead to the landmark prosecution, the first felony conviction for timber trafficking under the Lacey Act in US history. This saw Lumber Liquidators fined a record $13.15 million, some of which will go towards preserving Siberian tiger habitat and developing a DNA barcoding device for authenticating timber as it crosses borders. But it’s the precedent set by this prosecution which could be it’s longest lasting and most important impact.
Alexandra Elbakyan
Maybe a bit of a controversial one. Alexandra is the Kazakhstani scientist and hacker behind Sci Hub, the website that makes scientific papers blocked behind paywalls freely available to anybody with an internet connection. Alexandra has been sued millions by academic publishers. But at a time where evidence-based conservation is needed more than ever, I see little but good in the fact that conservationists the world over, especially in the developing world, have direct access to the latest and greatest evidence and research.
Alberto Curamil
Alberto Curamil, an indigenous Mapuche, organized the people of Araucanía to stop the construction of two hydroelectric projects on the sacred Cautín River in central Chile. The destructive projects, cancelled in late 2016, would have diverted hundreds of millions of gallons of water from the river each day, harming a critical ecosystem...READ MORE.
Jadav Payeng
Also known as the “Forest Man of India”, Jadav has single-handedly planted a forest larger than New York’s Central park on a river island in northeast India. Once a barren landscape, his forest is now hosts elephants, rhino and tigers. He started planting seeds in the 1970 s.
Sir David Attenborough
And finally it wouldn’t be an article worth reading if Sir David didn’t pop up at some point. It’s hard to calculate just how big an impact the man has had. But by sparking childhood fascinations with the natural world the world over, influencing the career paths of many a conservationist, and helping people develop a connection with far away places and animals–many of which they may never even get the chance to see in the flesh–it’s fair to say he’s had an out-sized impact.
Conservation’s unsung heroes
For every person I can find through a quick internet scroll, it’s worth noting that there are scores that go unnoticed. These are rangers, indigenous tribes, local communities and environmental activists of the world, who protect some of Earth’s wildest places, sometimes at great threat to themselves. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of these people and they inspire me to no end.
Interested in figuring out how you too can make a difference today?
Browse the stories of other people making a difference in slowing extinction rates:
- Whitley awards —Our flagship conservation prizes are won competitively following assessment by an expert academic panel and are worth £40,000 in project funding over one year. Also called ‘Green Oscars’.
- The Goldman Environmental Prize. Prize recipients are ordinary citizens who choose to take great personal risks to safeguard the environment and their communities.
- The Tusk Awards. Celebrates extraordinary people, whose work and lives might otherwise go unnoticed outside their fields. Their work with wildlife and communities in Africa safeguards the future for us all.
- The Indianopolis Prize. A biennial prize awarded by the Indianapolis Zoo to individuals for “extraordinary contributions to conservation efforts” affecting one or more animal species.
- UN Champions of the Earth. Champions of the Earth is the highest environmental honour of the United Nations.
- Eco-Hero Awards. Every year since 2003, Action For Nature (AFN), a U.S.-based non-profit, has sought to recognize and reward young people who are taking action to solve the world’s tough environmental problems.
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