2023 Emerging Conservationist Award Announced

Alejandro Arteaga is a biologist, conservationist and wildlife photographer. Arteaga is the Research Director at Khamai Foundation and also co-founded Tropical Herping, a tour agency that offers nature photography trips and tours throughout the tropics. His research is focused on tropical amphibians and reptiles. He has discovered and described 20 new species to science and raised funds to save 106 hectares of Chocó rain forest in Ecuador.

Dr. Sergio Balaguera-Reina is a conservation biologist focused on understanding the roles that crocodile species play in aquatic and coastal systems. Dr. Balaguera-Reina develops conservation plans that provide support for other species as well as the habitats and landscapes that they inhabit.

Fanny Cornejo is a primatologist, anthropologist and the director of Yunkawasi, an organization that works with Amazonian and Andean communities for the conservation of threatened species through sustainable economic development and protected area management approach. Fanny is also executive director of the Rainforest Partnership in Peru, Yunkawasi’s strategic partner for conservation and sustainable development activities in Peru.

Dr. Akbar John is an Associate Professor and conservation scientist focused on advancing the science and conservation of horseshoe crabs in Southeast Asia. Dr. John is responsible for establishing a facility to track global horseshoe crab biology. He has established the ‘Global Biorepository on horseshoe crabs’ as a reference source for genome-wide study on horseshoe crabs in the next few decades.

Dr. Corinne Kendall launched the first effort to protect vultures in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania. Dr. Kendall is the founder of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ African Vulture Saving Animals from Extinction program, which has developed a tool for discovering poisoning and other illegal activities in real-time, based on the movements of vultures fitted with satellite tracking tags.

Dr. Arthur Muneza is a wildlife ecologist investigating a variety of factors affecting the survival and reproduction of giraffe populations across East Africa by calculating population, mapping disease ecology, assessing sources of mortality and evaluating predatory interactions with lions.

Dr. Megan Murgatroyd is a conservation biologist focused on understanding and conserving the world’s most understudied and threatened birds of prey. She investigates the impacts of land-use change on Verreaux’s Eagles and implements GPS tracking to understand and predict wind turbine collision risk for this species.

Nguyen Thai is the founder of Save Vietnam’s Wildlife, which works to halt the extinction and champion the recovery of threatened species in Vietnam such as the critically endangered pangolin. He established Vietnam’s first anti-poaching units, which have destroyed 9,701 animal traps, dismantled 775 illegal camps, confiscated 78 guns, and arrested 558 people for poaching, leading to a significant decline in illegal activities in PúMát National Park.

Dr. Olivier Nsengimana is responsible for designing and implementing a conservation project to save the endangered grey-crowned crane. He established a database of illegally kept cranes in Rwanda, which led to 233 cranes being freed and 160 of those individuals being reintroduced to the wild. Dr. Nsengimana is the founder and director of the Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association, an organization working to expand research and conservation connected to endangered or threatened species in Rwanda.

Stephanie Vaz is an entomologist dedicated to firefly conservation. She is responsible for describing dozens of firefly species and providing information and resources to facilitate firefly identification. Her project investigates how climate change, land use change and light pollution affect fireflies in the Neotropics.