Winners of the 2020 Whitley wildlife conservation awards – in pictures

Patricia Medici, a leading conservationist, has been awarded the top prize, the Gold Award, by the Whitley Fund for Nature. Tapirs are the largest land mammals in South America and are considered living fossils, having survived waves of extinction over millions of years. However, they now face human threats, including destruction of their habitat owing to expansion of large-scale agriculture, cattle ranching and mining.

Medici, third from left, works in the Amazon. The rainforest is home to half of the species on Earth but faces unprecedented rates of deforestation, with more than 14.4 million hectares of forest cleared since the 1970s.

Medici’s work includes mapping routes used by tapirs and reforesting these corridors to connect fragmented areas of forest and tackle climate change. She uses tapirs to spark the interest of local communities in conservation through environmental education programmes and training.

On receiving the award, Medici said: ‘The timing could not be more appropriate given the current political situation in the country, the complete dismantling of our environmental legislation, and destruction of all governmental agencies focused on environmental conservation. Taking action now is particularly important to avoid wildlife and climate emergencies, and conservationists like me must help set the tone and agenda for environmental steps in the decade ahead.’

In Kenya, Abdullahi Hussein Ali has founded the Hirola Conservation Programme in an attempt to prevent the species from being wiped out. Hirola numbers have declined by more than 95% in the past four decades. With fewer than 500 left, the antelope is at risk of imminent extinction.

Ali’s project is based near the Kenya-Somalia border, a remote and volatile region. Garissa county is considered to be one of the most disadvantaged in Kenya, with poverty rates estimated at more than 80%. Ali, third from right, was a prime candidate to lead the country’s hirola conservation effort because of his understanding of the area in which he grew up, conservation knowledge and passion for the work.

Ali and his team have carried out vital research to understand the continuous decline of the species, and pinpointed habitat degradation as a key threat. Worsening droughts and livestock overgrazing has resulted in grasslands becoming overgrown by trees. While these wooded areas suit some wildlife, they are strictly avoided by the hirola, which look for the safety of open land.

With support from his award, Ali will work with communities to restore grasslands for the benefit of the hirola, and teach herders to use the land more sustainably to prevent overgrazing and to support their livelihoods. The team will also train a network of Somali pastoralists to track sightings of hirola.

An Indonesian conservationist, Yokyok ‘Yoki’ Hadiprakarsa, founder of the Indonesia Hornbill Conservation Society, has received a Whitley award worth GBP40,000 for his work protecting the critically endangered bird from the illegal wildlife trade.

The helmeted hornbill is a sacred species for the Dayaks, the indigenous people of Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo. The Dayaks believe the birds are the guardian of life and will guide them to God, and also regard them as a symbol of bravery for warriors. Despite this revered status, the hornbills’ casque – the red helmet-like protrusion on their beak – has made them a profitable target for poachers, who for centuries have sold their heads to collectors, including royalty.

The birds are now the most hunted hornbill in the world, with intricate carved ornaments made from their casque and bills highly coveted on the international black market, resulting in a sharp rise in hornbill poaching in recent years. Yoki estimates that in 2013, 6,000 helmeted hornbills were shot and decapitated in west Kalimantan.

Hadiprakarsa works with communities to provide them with the skills needed to earn an income through tourism, using the colourful hornbills to attract visitors to the area with the aim of ensuring the hornbills are worth more alive than dead.

In Nigeria, Rachel Ashegbofe Ikemeh, director of the SW/Niger Delta Forest Project, has won an award for her work with chimpanzees. Her research and conservation work addresses the decline of chimpanzees and their habitat – 80% of forests in the area have been lost to farming and logging. Chimps are also under threat from poachers, who hunt them for their body parts.

Ikemeh launched her project after the Nigerian-Cameroon chimpanzee was declared the most endangered of all chimpanzee groups in 2012. During the past eight years, her team have led a genetic study, which in 2018 found that although chimpanzee populations in the south-west and Niger delta of Nigeria share ancestry with the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee, they are a distinct group.

Ikemeh’s approach combines patrolling, education, research and policy reform to protect this newly discovered primate. She aims to work with the government to establish about 40,000 hectares of conservation land, and to call for revised laws to protect the area’s wildlife.

Ikemeh has had to work against gender stereotypes: her family initially feared the work was too dangerous for a woman.

In Brazil, Gabriela Rezende has won an award for her work protecting the black lion tamarin monkey of Sao Paulo. Her IPE project’s primary base is the Pontal do Paranapanema region, which holds the largest remnants of interior Atlantic forest, a biodiversity hotspot and home to the tamarin.

Initially, the black lion tamarin was not well known in the region, but education efforts have helped instil pride in the species. IPE’s efforts are more important than ever as Brazil’s government continues to undermine environmental policies. Rezende and IPE’s goal of establishing 45,000 hectares of continuous forest directly combats climate change and uses nature-based solutions in a country where deforestation and development are occurring at unprecedented rates.

Rezende recalls the first time she saw a black lion tamarin in the wild: ‘I was filming with the BBC for one of Sir David Attenborough’s documentaries. When I watched the interview footage back there was sparkle in my eye when the black lion tamarin appeared in the distance. They are the only primate species endemic to Sao Paulo so, as residents of this state, we have a responsibility to conserve their existence.’

The team is attempting to connect these scattered black lion tamarin populations by working with communities to restore forest corridors that connect the fragmented patches of habitat. Through planting saplings, grown in community-run nurseries, they are providing jobs for some of Brazil’s most marginalised communities.

In Bhutan, Phuntsho Thinley, a wildlife biologist, has won an award for his work to preserve the rare alpine musk deer. Despite the deer being a protected species, poachers hunt it for its musk pod, killing an estimated 100 deer in the country each year. A musk pod, only found in the male of the species, is worth more than gold on the international black market for its perceived pharmaceutical properties.

Thinley’s project, situated three days’ walk from the capital, Thimphu, is located in the vast Lingzhi park range. About 700 people live in the area, mainly subsisting on raising yak and collecting medicinal plants. The Alpine musk deer forms an important part of the food chain and its loss would have a catastrophic effect on the area’s ecological balance.

With just 16 park staff patrolling a massive 74,500 hectares, there is an urgent need to scale up efforts. Thinley’s team hope to increase anti-poaching patrols and monitoring, and to halve poaching by training all park staff as well as a quarter of local residents.

In South Africa, Jeanne Tarrant, known locally as the Frog Lady, works for the Endangered Wildlife Trust. She grew up surrounded by nature in the southern Drakensberg mountains of KwaZulu-Natal and has specialised in threatened South African frogs.

Forty-one percent of all frog species are at risk of extinction, and almost two-thirds of South Africa’s 135 frog species are found nowhere else, making the country a priority for amphibian conservation. Despite this, habitat loss caused by mining, agriculture and pollution is putting the country’s frogs at risk.

Some of the species Tarrant and her team conserve include the critically endangered Amathole toad, which had not been seen for more than 13 years until Tarrant and her colleagues re-discovered it in 2011.

In some South African cultures, frogs are associated with witchcraft, meaning they are often feared. Tarrant aims to dispel such myths and raise awareness of the role frogs play in the health of the environment and ecosystem.