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Dr. Iroro Tanshi: Rediscovering a Lost Bat, Then Saving Its Forest From Fire

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Dr. Iroro Tanshi found a bat species unseen in Nigeria for 45 years. Eight days later, she watched the forest it lived in catch fire.

That collision, a rediscovery and a disaster eight days apart, is what launched one of the most innovative community-led wildfire prevention programs in West Africa, and it's a big part of why Iroro just won the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize, conservation's "Green Nobel." In this conversation, we talk about the short-tailed roundleaf bat she rediscovered on a mountain on the Nigeria-Cameroon border, the 2016 wildfire that nearly trapped her field team, and how a local farmer's simple question, "could you just tell us when to burn?", became the seed of a science-based fire prediction system that now uses town criers and "Forest Guardians" to keep entire communities safe. Her program has hit zero forest fires in Afi for five consecutive years and is now scaling to the DRC, Madagascar, and Indonesia through the Tropical Fire Alliance.

In this conversation:
00:00:18 – Introduction
00:00:31 – Rediscovering the short-tailed roundleaf bat after 45 years
00:05:06 – Ten new bat species records for Nigeria
00:13:36 – The hammer-headed fruit bat's booming mating call
00:25:47 – Growing up in Warri, an oil town, and her father's nature-documentary rule
00:32:05 – Founding SMACON and winning the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize
00:41:00 – The 2016 wildfire that nearly trapped her field team
01:01:19 – Building a fire prediction model with town criers and Forest Guardians
01:02:25 – Zero wildfires for five years, and scaling globally with the Tropical Fire Alliance
01:25:15 Her advice for young African women in conservation

About Dr. Iroro Tanshi:

Dr. Iroro Tanshi is a Nigerian bat biologist and conservationist who co-founded SMACON, where she serves as Director of Research. She holds a BSc in Environmental Science and a Master's in Environmental Quality Management from the University of Benin, an MSc in Biodiversity Conservation from the University of Leeds, and a PhD from Texas Tech University. In 2016, she rediscovered the short-tailed roundleaf bat in Nigeria for the first time in 45 years. She has since won the Future for Nature Award (2020), the Whitley Award (2021), and the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize.

About SMACON:

SMACON (Small Mammal Conservation Organization) protects at-risk small mammals in West Africa through evidence-based conservation and community partnership. Its flagship wildfire prevention program combines weather-based fire risk prediction with traditional town crier networks and community "Forest Guardian" response teams, achieving zero forest fires in Afi for five consecutive years while protecting roughly 27,000 people across 16 communities. SMACON is now scaling that model globally through the Tropical Fire Alliance.

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SPEAKER_02

We got up there and just sort of looked back at the forest. It was just a conflagration where like there was no way we could have survived that. That's for sure. It was everywhere was covered, it was like fires like along the entire just like mountain, just going making his way up.

SPEAKER_06

Welcome to Saving Wildlife. With me, Sam Williams. This is where we get to hear from amazing conservationists about their life and work and all the incredible things they do to save wildlife. What was that like? It must have been an amazing experience.

SPEAKER_02

It was, and that moment, I I really can't always find the words to truly describe it, but it was just such an a shattering moment for us, especially me, because I was the biologist on the on the crew, and I had local assistants who had no idea what that I was talking about. I was just like, our lives are about to change. You have no idea what this was.

SPEAKER_06

Well, you were kind of extracting it from the net and you knew already what was happening.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I knew it was different. Oh, yeah. I saw it, I was like, whoa, don't you have big ears? Like, that's not usual for that group, at least. And so I started flipping through the uh field guide, and I was like, oh my gosh. Look at the last entry for when it was last recorded in the 70s.

SPEAKER_06

My gosh, that just you know short-tailed uh round leaf bat.

SPEAKER_02

Correct. It's the short tailed round leaf bat. It's a mouthful, but uh it's it's exactly what it is. It's got a uh what's called a leaf nose. So it's got frills on the face.

SPEAKER_06

That's to help it find the the prey items?

SPEAKER_02

It's part of its echolocation beam management. So it will it would use that to manage what direction to send the beam of the of the call. So I mean, if you think about yourself as a bat, you will be out in the forest trying to find insects, and it'll be insects all around you. You do need to decide which direction to go. So it does use that to manage the direction of the it's it's the most incredible thing.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, it sounds amazing. And this species, it was found. Um, well, let's come back to that. Let's so you're there, let's talk about your experience. You're there, you've got this bat, and then you've you're you've put it in the holding bag or something, and then you're looking through the manual the the guide, then there must have been a really exciting, you know, you come back from the field, you're telling people. I I mean I'm just imagining what that must be like because I've I've definitely been in the field where I've been on the island of Mauritius, where there was um an extinct owl or the dodo, in fact, and just thinking there, like, what would I do if a dodo walked around the corner? Um, what what was it like from then? Like, who who do you tell?

SPEAKER_02

That's a good question. And in fact, it's it's it's what every biologist, like you were saying, uh, look forwards to to become this person who who figured out, oh, there's still that extinct thing still around, you guys. Uh don't despair, you know. Um, so I was really looking forward to telling that story that oh my gosh, we got this bat that hadn't been seen in 45 years. But um it was part of a long field season, so we cut this bat and then we started making our way up to the mountain top because we were trapping along at different points along the mountain. Serving back along a mountain transect, so an elevational transect. So you go from the top bottom, you go to the next level up on that mountain, and you go to the next level. So I kept going up like that, but by the second point after that discovery, um we uh we encountered a wildfire in the forest. So we hadn't even gotten out yet to tell people because this is a remote location where it was like I couldn't text anybody to say, Oh, we got this bat, you know. Okay. Um so we hadn't even told anybody about this bat before that fire broke out.

SPEAKER_06

This was just a uh, as I remember, just a couple of weeks after the discovery.

SPEAKER_02

About eight days after. Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_06

And that has influenced a lot of your work. Absolutely. We'll come back to that. Yes. The survey work that you did, I think you also found some other species that hadn't been recorded in Nigeria or had not been recorded there for a long time or something. U tell me more about that because I can't remember exactly.

SPEAKER_02

That's uh that's an interesting one because Nigeria uh almost uh always represents this gap in bat diversity in the continent. Uh, because uh there's very little research interest in Nigeria, either locally or internationally, for bats. And so uh, whenever I was going out to the field, I made a list of bats you would expect on both sides. Uh you would expect in Nigeria based on what we know on both sides. So if a species was already known from Cameroon and Ghana, Bene Republic, Togo, so East and West, yeah, uh, that meant, oh, maybe you could expect it in Nigeria. So I had a list.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I had about, I want to say six or eight bats on my list of what to look out for.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

This was not one of those bats. Right. However, exciting. Yes, uh however uh at the end of the almost uh it was a four-year survey.

SPEAKER_01

Oh right.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, uh, well, not continuous the entire time, but you know, going back and forth, four field seasons at least. At the end of that time, uh the total number came to about 10 species that had not been known from Nigeria ever. Wow. Um so that was that was uh yes, it was uh it was a big moment just realizing oh my gosh, you count one, two, three by the the number of fingers you have on your hand, and you're like, whoa, you know.

SPEAKER_06

That's really cool. I mean, that that's really that's like um kind of pioneer biology fieldwork stuff. It's really cool stuff, and so that there's that one um experience which stuck out for me, but there must you must have had other memorable experiences of uh either the the sheer number of bats that you've seen or other encounters in the field. Can you think of one? Any stories that you might share?

SPEAKER_02

That's a good thing. I know biologists typically will have you know their lives lists, you know how many how many species they've they've recorded in their lifetime, so to speak. Um I didn't really have a lives list. I I think I had like total number. So whenever I hit 70 70, um sorry, not 70 species, 700 individuals, I was like, whoa. Oh wow. I I I've collected seven, well, captured seven hundred individuals of bats. That's that's gotta be a record. Seven hundred. A hundred individual bats. Individual bats in the field.

SPEAKER_03

Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_02

But that was that wasn't even the end of it, because um by the time my entire field season was over, it was about a hundred uh about a hundred and sorry, a thousand two hundred bats.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so um so I I was definitely just thrilled that I could claim to have held up to a thousand bats in hand.

SPEAKER_06

Right. Um so that's what what kind of things are you doing when you're catching them? Obviously, you're identifying the species. Is there any other work? Are you doing any measurements or tagging or anything like that?

SPEAKER_02

Yes, so because the questions I was trying to answer were things about what bats are along the elevational gradients, you know, at the bottom, midway, you know, in between, and at the top, uh, I was definitely trapping the bats, but also why and how are they able to make it all the way to the top?

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

So that meant I was measuring other things like the body mass, the traits like um body characteristics, uh, the length of the arm, the the size of the skull, and the width of the skull, you know all of those things. So a lot of my work does revolve around bat diet as well and skulls. Right. Okay. Uh people don't realize this. Uh I I look like the the bat hugger, and I am. Well, you know, when it's safe to to hold the bat, obviously, I I do take a lot of uh precautions there, but um, but I also deal with skulls a lot. So um uh but like in museums.

SPEAKER_06

In museums, museum specimens.

SPEAKER_02

Um but before I even get to the museum specimen, I will do things like measuring the bite force in the field, like how hard the bats can bite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

So uh that's relevant for parrots as well. Oh, it's a big thing. Because they're cracking, they're cracking nuts and they've got these great big beaks.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So how much of a bite you have can you know predict how much uh what types of insects you can eat. In my case, I was looking at insectivorous bats. Um so you can look at uh how much of a how well are they able to say crack a beetle up, so like a big beetle or a small beetle. So a beetle have a tough exoskeleton. Exoskeleton. Whereas a moth is much soft softer and you know it's a bit more, it's chewing and gooey. It's got all the good stuff.

SPEAKER_05

Like a caramel chocolate. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_02

That's the exact description. So I really that my research is it?

SPEAKER_05

It tastes like caramel chocolate.

SPEAKER_02

So, yeah, my research does explore those things, everything from how do they make it to the top, but also how are they eating what they're eating. Uh so I was measuring, you know, a lot of the traits that would allow bats, you would expect will allow a bat to persist at the top of the uh mountain. So uh things to do with even how easily they drop into what's called torpor, which is an extended sleep. So I would measure, you know, you get a bat in the morning, and so you for those individuals you just hold them like through the night, you get a bat early in the morning, it's still slightly asleep, and so you watch how long it takes for it to fully wake up. Wow. And then you record the temperature over that time, and you can tell that as soon as it hits what's uh considered environmental temperature, the temperature, because I would also have a record of the temperature that morning, you can see that it was it was really way below that morning temperature. So I could I would typically maybe have things like 10 uh 10, 11 degrees Celsius um external temperature or ambient temperature.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But the bats would be doing something like three or four. Really? So it was definitely it definitely dropped its temperature to be able to enjoy the night and so it's or the sleep time.

SPEAKER_06

Top is like a mini hibernation. Hummingbirds do that as well, I think. Yeah. Right. And um when it comes to the diet, the two obvious categories that I think of are insectivores and frugivorous bats. But there are other, there are many other, like well, there's definitely fish eating bats. What other diet choices do bats have? Are there are there?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so they're bats that will take nectar.

SPEAKER_06

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Uh there are bats that will take blood. So the at least three bats in uh South America would do um a blood, and and they don't do it like the media portrays. Never believe what the media says about bats and vampires. But um, you know, so but they're called vampire bats, uh, for that reason, being that they take blood. Um, but then you know, there are other things like um uh the bats in Africa, there's one species at least, is a carnivore specialist, meaning it only eats um it's it's uh it only eats vertebrates, more or less. So whereas small rodents, small rodents, small bats, small birds. Wow. No, I kid you not, it's such a it's such a vertebrate uh omnivore in that sense. It's a really interesting species, and in fact, I'm currently uh examining its stomach uh contents. Uh actually it's poop to understand what's often the case with biology, isn't it? Exactly. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Are you doing is it DNA, e D E DNA kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_02

Uh so it's m it's DNA of the poop. So more like metabocoding. So I collect I collect the poop from the actual bat, not necessarily poop on the floor, but the poop the bat's bat what held what's held in the hand allowed to poop and I collect that poop and then I I sequence the DNA in the poop to try to figure out what that what they're eating. That is fascinating. A lot of it um connected to agriculture sometimes, but um also trying to understand what's at the bottom of the mountain and what's at the top, right? And it is that food source different as you go up and down.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. We've got a couple of batcles here. Yes. Um, as they're there, I think it's kind of cool. This is the moment to talk about them. This one is a uh hammer head. Yes. I've forgotten the fruit bat. Yes. Is that exactly right? That was it? Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Uh it's a hammer-headed fruit bat. Yes.

SPEAKER_06

It has very large teeth and big gaps.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, big gaps because um it does eat uh it's a fruit-eating bat.

SPEAKER_06

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_02

So uh so it doesn't really need to, I mean, it does need to be able to get in there, but it doesn't need that many teeth to break down. It's not grinding. It just you know, uh I mean it because it's such a big bat, it's it's Africa's largest fruit bat. Okay. Um but I think what's really interesting about them is and I can come to it, is is what they do with their with their with their uh sound, the sounds they produce. I can I can come to that.

SPEAKER_04

No, tell me.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04

So I don't wanna I'm not going for anticipation here.

SPEAKER_02

I wanna know. I know, I know. So um so this is actually a female, but the male has a bit of a box-like face. Okay. Uh if you do see the photo, it's uh it's a really interesting face. Uh they've got a box of a face. And so if you were to hold the body of the bat, it would look like you were holding the hammer, and that's why it's called the hammer headed.

SPEAKER_06

It does with the hammer. If we can get a picture, we'll put that in the video. And then and so anybody listening on audio has to go to YouTube to see it. Yeah. Um, cool.

SPEAKER_02

So so but what's really cool about the the males is that they have a lecking behavior where they um they hang out in the trees if you're in the forest at night, you can hear this sort of booming. It's it's a combination of a booming and like a uh I don't want to say a cracking call. It's it's it's almost as if a woodpecker was making a booming sound. Wow. It goes. But but but like also boom boom. So it's I don't know how to describe it. Do you do you have any audio? There are audios online actually.

SPEAKER_04

Okay, but add some audio in.

SPEAKER_02

So they do that, and uh, and they're if you're in the forest, you you hear them from the trees at night, and it really is just the males calling out for the females that then you know sometimes you're looking really carefully, and then maybe there's a bit of uh lighting or you have a spotlight, you can actually see females sort of flooding around, like trying to decide, is that my guy? Is that my guy? You know, it's like it's like being at a bar trying to figure out you know, is this gonna work.

SPEAKER_06

She's uh selecting a mate based on the quality of his call or the complexity of your call or something like that. Like very similar to songbirds and and other birds, and they're also doing licking behavior. You said that the hammerheaded bat is the largest bat in Africa.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_06

And I've I've actually held a Rodrigues fruit bat, which is an endangered was I don't know now, but was a critically endangered species, and it was pretty big. How what's the kind of wingspan of of a bat of the hammerhead bat? Do you have a big one?

SPEAKER_02

It does go about that much.

SPEAKER_06

Really?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. But uh uh the when I said largest in Africa, I'm talking mainland. Okay. So so some of the island um what's called uh uh flying foxes.

SPEAKER_06

Right, that's what I think typically think of.

SPEAKER_02

Those those will be slightly bigger. Okay. Uh especially also um Ruan and Comoros uh on the Comoros Island as well. Um yeah, those will be slightly bigger than uh the hammerhead. But it's quite huge.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, I mean that is a yeah, big bat. I love that we've just gone straight into bats because I I feel pretty like pretty ignorant when it comes to bats, and there's so such incredible diversity in among bats. It's really, really cool. Um makes me wonder you're talking about like being in the forest listening to the lecking bats. Uh something I've I wondered, I was wondering about as I was kind of thinking about chatting with you. Um I'm an early bird and and and I go to bed at like nine o'clock. But are you were you naturally always like I mean you your survey work is at night? Were you were you always sort of staying up late? And was that just an was it a natural thing for you to to get into bats? Or um how how did you come to find that you're this is you're adapted to study bats?

SPEAKER_02

I like how you end it on adapted because um well, so uh you can be an early worm or you can be a nine owl or night bat, as it were. And I to be honest, I'm I'm more the early worm. Oh, okay, early worm or early bat. Early bird, there you go. Early bird, not early worm. You can be an early bird or night owl or a night bat. But um I am very much an early bird, at least that's that's the that's how I was raised. So you know, wake up early and you know, make your bed and and get ready for school and whatnot whatnot. Um and and that continue through college. But um as soon as you fall in love with bats and you're like, I gotta go catch these bats. That's uh that's that's it. You you you just accept that your life has now changed to becoming a night owl uh night bat. I don't want to say night owl. So I guess. So I said I guess the first time I was like, I've got to practice to stay up late. Uh because I I'm used to being really sleepy at 10. Um, but uh after a couple of times, you're like, I can do this, I can keep doing this.

SPEAKER_06

And so what would a field field session look like? What would you be going out into the field at at 10? Or what what would that look like? How long do you stay out?

SPEAKER_02

That's good. Uh it depends on the questions you're trying to ask. Uh so typically most people would do 6 p.m. Uh well if you're in the tropics. It's getting dark. When it's getting dark uh at 6 p.m. But if you're here in the US or you know, somewhere in a temperate country uh where during the summer, which is typically the subway period, uh it doesn't get darker early. So I was always like, oh my gosh. So that means you're only trapping for a few hours. In any case, um most biologists will do that just before dark till 12 midnight. So you're really trying to go for the peak activity period.

SPEAKER_06

The beginning of the night. Just like with birds, it's the beginning of the day. There you go. Right.

SPEAKER_02

You just want to hit that peak period because you're trapping bats that are in free flight.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

If you were to say go into a colony, like say a cave or bridge, that's a different sampling scenario. You can be in and out in 20 minutes. Yeah, because bats, uh depending on what time of day you're sampling, depending on you know what exact questions you're asking, you can be done quickly. Right. But if you're trapping bats in free flight, then you do need to, especially if you're like um exploring questions to do with foraging behavior, foraging patterns, and and diet and all that, you won't see what you're eating through through most of the night, then um you do go up to um uh midnight. Right. However, when I started, nobody told me that. So as a master student, over-enthusiastic master student, I I would trap bats from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Oh my goodness. Uh my field assistants did not like me at the end of the field season. Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think uh one of the rangers I worked with in a national park, and I think I've told you the story, Sam. One of the rangers, um he was like, Why do you make us stay up so late? You're making us walk through the night. Nobody's ever done this to us. And I'm like, I am not anybody, I'm myself, and I'm doing bat research. You should say you've never done bat research. That's what you should say. You shouldn't say, anyway, I was just trying to sell it to them, but they weren't having it until and then, in fact, one of them said, And and you're doing it for these ugly things. And I'm like, bats are not ugly, you know. So um, so I was trying to convince him, and I was like, but I kept trying to tell him about all the cool stuff about bats. He wasn't still buying it, he was quite unhappy to be kept up all night until you know. We um the last bat for the ninth was a pretty bat, the yellow-winged bat.

SPEAKER_05

This is your favorite. That's my favorite bat. I remember that.

SPEAKER_02

And it's my favorite for that reason. When you're trying to convince dispersing, like, yeah, bats are really cool, they're so distant. So that he wasn't buying until we found those two bats in the net. He was like, What? They can look this pretty. I'm like, that's what I've been trying to tell you. They're different in their own ways, if it's pretty in you know, looks or it's pretty in what they do, or just they're intensely, wildly crazy ecology.

SPEAKER_06

I mean that's the thing I like, is when you realize like this has all these adaptations to allow it to live and do it these sort of things, but that needs some kind of uh interpretation for people to understand. That's true. But bats are often um, I'd say bats are often misunderstood and feared, um, and even kind of like associated with witchcraft in certain places and things. How do you now in in sort of conservation? We'll come back to your path, but how do you convince people that um that they are beautiful and amazing? What are the things you've the ta tactics you've deployed to achieve that?

SPEAKER_02

Uh I have to just say at the outset that I you can't convince everybody. Right. Some people just tell you, I hate bats, and there's nothing you can say to me, and I'm like, okay. At least we've we've established that you're not the person I should be talking to. Or at least maybe I'll come back to you next year. Yeah. Uh but for the vast majority of people, you know, we we we've relied on good photographs. Uh, we don't usually have the best of photographs, but we do try. Uh, and when we don't have them, we can, you know, um uh use someone else's photographs just to say, look, bats eat insects and insects are destroying your crops, how about that?

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Um, or um you know the sheer butter you like to use so often. I mean, I mean, the global industry around sheer butter has just gone boom. Shear butter that you cook with. Yeah, okay, yeah. Cook with cosmetics and just every, it's almost in every it's it's I want to say it's much more. What's it like about palm oil to be honest? Yeah. They are primarily planted by bats. Okay. Yes. There isn't a real um pollinated by bats. No, no, no. Planted. Planted but because of seed disposal. So bats will take it and move, and then as they're going, they probably either finish eating or they move somewhere else to eat it. And so by doing that, they're dispersing the seeds. And people don't know this. Yeah. But I think my favorite one is um West Africa's stinkiest spice. I I can I will I will I will I will break it down. So Nigerians love this, and a lot of West Africans actually love this spice. That's really stinky. It's a it's a bean, it's from the Pakia species.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

And it's if you heard of durian, it's from the same family. Okay, all right. All right. All right, so um uh so pakia species uh basically I take that back, it's not like durian, smells maybe as stinky as durian. I think that's uh where I was making mixing things up. But the West Africa stinkiest spice in Nigeria is called Dawadawa. It's a bean, uh tree, a bean from a tree that you ferment. And uh the point is not to make it stinky, the fermentation process makes it stinky, but then it tastes really good in the soups.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

So so um one time I was in Burkina Faso, uh helping with a bat project. Uh there was a PhD student I was supporting at the time, uh, whose work I was assisting uh uh and learning how to be a bat scientist too. And he he you know took me into Burkina Faso and uh I was used to just having just a little bit of that stinky spice, it's called Dawadawa in Nigeria, having just a little bit in your soup, in your you know, sauce, whatever it was you were making. But these guys, it's like almost half the the potter rice. Really? So it's really stinky rice. But when you when you put in your mouth, you're like, oh, that tastes really good, you know, for that reason. Yeah, so um, so but they're they're primarily pulling it, pulling it here by bats. Okay. And uh and the flower is only fertile for one ninth if it wasn't visited by a bat, for example, that's it. It's it's there. That flower does not become a bin for you to, you know, harvest to go make your stinky spice and your and your tasty. So stinky spice, tasty sauce, you know, that kind of yeah. Um but uh so you tell people that they're like, oh, it's start to soften up a little bit. And you know, um, I think there's also a lot of confusion with, oh, you know, because we don't see them, we don't know what they are, so we can ascribe whatever it is we want to ascribe to them. And uh bringing these photos close home or or even showing them museum samples, sometimes you you have a bat stretched out with the full wing so you can see the whole proportion of the bat. And you show them that and they're like, oh, okay. And it's it's not as confusing to them as it used to be uh prior. In fact, the one thing that we found in Nigeria was always people thought, people always thought, um, or always had this confusion of not sure if it's a bat or a bird. And I'm like, all right, look at this. Yeah, it's got four like you, so your hair, that's four. Um, it does have life birth, yeah, you know, and it the younger breastfed. So it's a mammal like you. And you're like, oh, really?

SPEAKER_06

But I think like the wings, you can see the bone stretch. You can see the bone still. You can see that it's like an arm.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly, exactly. So we do show people all that, and but kids are like the easiest to always show these. They're just so taken by it, especially when you bring off all the colorful props to for them to either make a uh photo uh or um or uh just wear some bad stuff, you just they just they just go for it.

SPEAKER_06

You don't even ask questions like we do the same with the parrot costumes and everything, so yeah. So you grew up in I wanna I think it's called Wari.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

In uh which is kind of an oil town, it seems. How did you go from you know growing up in a place like that to a um to becoming somebody passionate about wildlife?

SPEAKER_02

That's a good question. Uh uh the background of having worrying story here is uh is is what it meant ecologically. So a lot of people around the world and Nigerians recognize that the Niger Delta has been severely damaged by oil exploration. And uh Wari was a small town or is a small town built around what was Nigeria's only functional refinery for many, many, many, many years, many decades to be to be fair. Um and so there was this um sort of uh ecologically degraded uh concrete jungle that was right next to a refinery that was gas flaring. Um but at the same time it was the only economic thing that the people knew. And so if you were growing up there, you you didn't really see a lot of nature. The occasional bird. Um but also you you weren't thinking of the economic, you weren't thinking thinking of the environmental problems, you were thinking of the economic advantages. Right. You know, and uh and every kid, I want to say, every kid that grew up in Wari, their parents, not the kids' dream, but their parents' dream was, oh, you're gonna go walk in the refinery, you're gonna go work in the oil company, because they paid big money.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Um and and and and and so when you ask uh how do you go from being in Wari to loving nature, and I'm like, okay, the biggest thing was my dad uh insisted that the only TV thing, the only thing you could watch on TV was nature documentaries or the news. So we would do the news with him, and then you had the TV only for nature documentaries, nothing more. Or he would record some of those uh some nature documentaries on his uh on a like a VCR cassette and bring it from work uh for us to watch at home. So if there wasn't something on TV that was showing a documentary, the only other thing you had to watch was you know what he'd recorded, or just four movies that we had to watch and repeat. So now I can't watch movies a second time. I probably promise you it's the worst ever trauma in that sense. But anyway, so what that meant was despite not having uh nature around me to experience uh per se, I had it in my house, you know, watching nature documentaries the whole time. And uh you kind of go from that to then, you know, I went to college, I I studied uh environmental science, and and then I went to I attended a field course, and that's where my love for nature really took off.

SPEAKER_06

You did a bachelor's and a and a master's in Nigeria. But you've also done a master's in the University of Leeds.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's so I you know went to university in Nigeria and uh it was all about environment, it was an environmental science course, and uh believe it or not, the first day I went to an oil well as part of an class, uh like a class um uh excursion to an oil well near near to uh close to Benin City where I went to school, I I cried the whole day. I was like, I can't I can't do this oil thing. So there was already a dissociation that I didn't um like a conscious disagreement with the societal expectation to work in the oil industry.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

And uh I I don't say this often, but there was a time my dad and I didn't speak for a few months because he was like, You gotta go apply to these places, and I'm like, I am not. He's like, I want to see your CV. I'm like, I am not giving you my CV either, you know. Um, because I was like, I don't, I don't want to get called by someone who says, Oh, you apply to this thing, you know, because my maybe my dad was gonna. I don't I didn't know what he was gonna do with my CV, but I didn't want to be um not bullied, but I didn't want to uh fold that, not because I was trying to fight society expectations. I I bent on oil. I was just like, this this is not what I want. And I did in fact do uh an internship uh right after uni where I uh I was working with a cleanup an o an agency that was an oil spiel cleanup company. Um and I didn't think things were always honest. I thought, you know, there there's no way to be in that place and truly, you know, impact the environment positively. You know, because there were so many limitations, resources and whatnot. But that's that's the story for another day. In any case, where I was going was I already had that I don't want to be in the oil industry, even though that's all I knew growing up. Um But then I went on this field course right after university and uh and I attended lots and lots of field classes, and one of in one of those, a Swedish professor was describing this really exciting field work that was going on in uh uh uh Ivory Coast, say you go. And it was of her PhD students who were climbing up into the forest canopy and he was recording the bats that were visiting flowers and collecting the scent of those flowers. I just thought, my gosh, this is the sort of thing that you see in you know National Geographic or you know, a lot of these nature documentaries that I was just I'd grown up watching. Um I and I didn't know to be honest, I didn't know that fun stuff could happen in West Africa. Yeah, just fun research. I just always thought it was very foreign to us, you know. Right, okay. Um so that that piqued my interest for sure.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, I can imagine. And then so then you've gone on to do uh the another master's in the University of Leeds, which is near where I grew up, yeah, and then you've gone on to do a PhD that was in the States, I think. Uh in the in the US in the US, in Texas, okay, right. And then is it f as a coming out of that where you've then gone and founded SmackOn?

SPEAKER_02

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_06

With your partner, yes, Ben. Yes.

SPEAKER_02

At the time he was a friend and we were doing field work together, you know, one thing leads to another, as always. So um did university, couple masters, and then started a PhD, and that's I love how that you do that so yeah.

SPEAKER_06

I just did university, a couple of masters, and and then I just after in a PhD.

SPEAKER_02

I just thought, you know, just throwing a PhD, why not?

SPEAKER_06

Amazing. So you've done a decade of science.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, that's exactly right. It's uh it's actually more than a decade because um I went, I I've I guess you maybe you don't count undergraduate as science, but it's it was still science. Exactly. So there you go. So so I think that you were like, oh maybe you don't. Yeah, you do. So I I want to say 20 years of of of science because I graduated my PhD in 2021. That was almost 20 years after I I started my my my college career, like my uh undergrad. So anyway, um, so that's you could say that was two decades of trying to you know become this excited scientist who could just go out in the wild, because my dad used to describe scientists as people who are so dedicated to this one thing, they can get locked into just studying the hair. You know, he would go into sermons about how scientists are saving the world, they're helping us figure out how the world is, and you know, I I wanted to be that person. And in fact, when uh as as you are uh you know a young kid in Nigeria, most people want you to go study medicine, engineering, or uh or law. Uh the closest thing for me was because I didn't really do physics very well. Uh well, I didn't really do math very well. I loved physics, but not very good at math. Right. Um, but but but biology was my thing. I thought, okay, I'll do medicine. But whatever I get asked, I will be like, I want to study the science of medicine. My dad was like, there is no such thing, you know, science of medicine. But it was really the idea of the scientists my dad always painted the picture of a scientist. It was, you know, this person was chilling in the wall. So I always just wanted to be that person who'll be this exciting science and do so. I I guess I already always had uh an eye for science and the and the excitement of science, the ability to enjoy nature, which um I felt I hadn't gotten uh fully as an undergrad, and I wanted to explore that as a master's student. I was really bored about the you know the programs I was seeing around there. I was like, okay, there's someone doing snails, and that's cool, but snails, you know, diversity. There's a lot of diversity there, but you know, it's like a lot of digging in the soil and trying to find those. Not exciting enough. Um, and then the fish people will like just go out, trap some fish, and that's it. I was like, that's boring too. I want some, I want a bit more, I guess you might say a tactile experience to, you know, this whole um uh plan of being a scientist.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_02

And again, my dad, I he I think he may have said something like, Oh, you know, there are people who will be in the forest for 30 years, and I was like, I want to be that person. Nice. So well, he thinted all that, and so whenever I heard about this field course, I'm sorry, heard about bats during his field course. I was like, bats, that's where it's at. Right, you know, it's like I'm not digging the soil, I could climb mountains, I could climb canopies, I could, I could be crawling in haze. I wanted to just study bats. There was no taking that away from me.

SPEAKER_06

Amazing. And you mentioned your dad quite a few times. Has he at first it was sort of directing you towards oil, and I think just wanting you to, I think he was what it sounds like he was wanting you to succeed, and that was what he knew. But now, how does he relate to you now with with you with your successes and and your work and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_02

He uh he just succeeded in it, I have to say. But um, I think how it started was the first time I told him, I want to go study bats in forests. He's like, Really? What is that? I was like, it means you're a field biologist. He's like, nobody understands what a field biologist is. I'm like, I don't care, I would just tell people that's what I am. And he was like, Okay, okay. But I don't think he understood it until I too told him, you know, I got a grant to study bats. He's like, someone gave you money to study bats. I'm like, yes, and in forest, I'm like, yes, I'm gonna go into a forest and study bats. I love it. He was just completely surprised by it. Yeah, uh, but I think with some of the successes I've had, he's like, wow, I can't. He all right, let me even paint another picture. He's a surveyor, so a land surveyor.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

And I used to beg him, please take me with you to the field, please. I want to see what you do. I want to, because he would describe how he's in the mangroves. I'm like, I want to go to the mangroves. I've never been. Like, and he'd be like, No, you won't survive in the field. I was quite, you know, smallish and lanky as a child. He was like, You're never, you, you, you, you're not strong enough to be in the field, you know. So these days he'd be like, Wow, I can't even believe the amount of things you tell me when you say you're you know you're in the mountains for like three months straight. He's like, that's that I did I didn't see that coming from you know, right anyway. So now he's completely uh made a 180 going from people who will support bats, like, oh my gosh, people love you because of bats. You're so successful because of bats. Anyway, so he certainly made uh that turnaround.

SPEAKER_06

That's great. And I think then this is the perfect moment to say congratulations. Thank you because you've just won the Goldman Prize, which is a huge achievement. What do you think that uh how's that gonna impact your work? What does that mean for your work going forward? It's a huge recognition of what you've done. Can you leverage it to help you achieve more with bats?

SPEAKER_02

Yes, uh, I really love what the Goldman uh prize did. Uh they rather than just focus on the new shiny thing, which is the fire program and how it's impacting climate, which is critical and it's an emergency in its own right, they didn't leave the bats out. So I really are great, I'm grateful for that because it's such a big stage, you know. People need to hear about bats. The more they hear about them, the more they can support them. And I mean, it got Nigerians talking about bats. Are you kidding? That's like the biggest thing ever.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You know, I feel like if things go viral in Nigeria, it feels like it's gone viral around the world, just because there's so many people in the country, you know. So it was such a big deal in Nigeria. Like, in fact, I was even I was even listed as Nigerian of the week or something like this. I was like, oh my gosh, that's so cool. Fantastic. So so so interest on the ground in Nigeria has really grown. Yeah, but also just uh interest to support the work that we do. A lot of people are reaching out to say, you know, either can I donate or can I do this or do that? So it's it's really made a difference. But especially uh, and I could go on about this, but the the tropical fire alliance that we've just formed, uh which we're trying to scale up a global program.

SPEAKER_06

Let's um so hold that for a minute. It's a big platform for it. Yeah, let's uh because that's fantastic. So um so you've I I want to go back to you've just discovered the short-tailed, round-leafed bat. Yes. And with eight days later, I think you said there's a a bushfire that uh comes through that whole area where the habitat where that animal lives, and many others. Um that I think galvanized you into um the the work with with Smack on with with uh fire prevention. Tell us what you're doing with fire prevention, and then we'll get to the bigger now, the new big thing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Right. So you're out chopping bats at night, as one does if you're a bat biologist.

SPEAKER_06

As one does. Yeah, I often find myself.

SPEAKER_02

I often find myself doing this. Um and uh we were making our way up the mountain. So you start at the bottom, you you get your bottom, your you know, lowland site, and then you go to the next level up. So the next level up, uh we were we're on just this small patch of tableland along this really steep mountain. So it's a fairly steep part of the country, uh, not just of the country, but it's a steep mountain as part of uh in the in the mountain systems around.

SPEAKER_06

These are the mountains in the southeast of Nigeria.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly, on the border with Cameroon.

SPEAKER_06

And and does that is that forest continuous and going into Cameroon and it does.

SPEAKER_02

Well, so Afi Mountain is separated by a huge chunk of forest, uh, is separated by a road. Okay. Uh and you know, there are communities that kind of come off that road. Uh, but just across it will be another chunk of forest, uh that's continuous with forests in in Cameroon. Like vast lands. Uh so we're out, you know, trapping bats in the evening on that next level up, so about 400 meters elevation. And about 9 p.m. So by 9 p.m. your bat activity tends to peak a little bit and then starts to go down towards 12, midnight, and then you can maybe take a break. And if you wanted, you could wake up very early in the morning.

SPEAKER_06

Keep going until six.

SPEAKER_02

So you either go until six and have very unhappy field assistants, or you could take a break and say, All right, everyone, shut down. Let's go take a nap, a night nap. Right, everyone, night nap. Yeah, like uh like two hours or three hours. You nap for a couple hours and then be back up at four. You know, everyone's got their alarm to be up at four because we leave the nets, the traps open. Okay. Uh, because uh if you're trapping bats in the forest on the story, it's a whole other story from trapping bats out in the open because uh they're difficult to find, they're difficult to trap. And so you really want to maximize your chances. So even though we weren't trapping through the night, because we had these really nice traps that the bats go in, they can hang out until you pick them up. Okay. They're fine. And if they wanted to flood around and fly a bit, they're still fine. So they're totally good. Um, so anyway, we we had our traps out, ten traps. Uh these are hefty things. Uh had them out trapping, and somewhere around nine when activity was starting to peak, we're like, that looks like a fire from you know in the distance. And uh we're like, okay, it looks far away. We should probably be okay. Probably. I know. So we can't like you know occasionally peek in to see where, you know, how close it was, if if it was getting close or hitting our direction, because there was no way to know. So even though we had uh radios so we could like radio uh our partner in in the base camp uh to say, hey, uh what's the status? We I at least uh as part of the team, I was already starting to get uh a bit worried. I was like, I don't like the fact that we don't know what's going on with this fire, there's no way to predict. But I was I was too slow to think because by the time you know it was like maybe an hour or so later, our field assistant who wasn't in camp radioed us to say, Hey, camp's filled with smoke, and I'm like, yeah, we're we're getting out of here now. Yeah, you know, so it was a quick uh decision to pack it up, and packing it up was just take all the really expensive equipment that you couldn't quickly replace, at least not locally.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Uh and we just had big backpacks and like a big giant Ben, who's not my husband, at the time carried a big box on his head, uh, an adjunct backup with you know all this expensive equipment. Uh and then we covered our food. We couldn't bring down our tents, we just like left stuff. We just covered our food um uh with uh a blanket and poured water over it so that way if the fire came through, it would spare some of it. Because again, we're we're making our way up the mountain. Was meant to be about a 20, like a 30-day trip to the top of the mountain. So that was a lot of food. I was a poor page used to that. I wasn't gonna quickly replace them. So I was hoping the fire would be fast, it would just go through quickly and then we'll still have some food. Right. Um, so anyway, that's what we did, and then we started racing down this mountain.

SPEAKER_06

Wow.

SPEAKER_02

Um, and I think that was the big jolt that uh as soon as we got to the you know to the village and we tried to set up camp because it was midnight at this point. Uh oh, by the way, by the at the time at the time we were dec descending, um, our field assistant who'd radio to say of campus field uh with smoke, she got lost. So we had to spend about an hour and a half trying to find her. So it was it was not the best of nights. So we spent about an hour and a half trying to find her. So by the time we got to the village, it was already midnight. And so, you know, we tried to set up, but um we got there and just sort of looked back at the forest. It was just a conflagration. We're like, there was no way we could have survived that, that's for sure. It was everywhere was covered, it was like fires like along the entire just mountain, just going making its way up. So I was really grateful that we did evacuate when we did. And in fact, uh, part of the evacuation we also had it was so smoky, we had toils, wet toils over our noses to make sure that we weren't, you know, breathing in smoke. Our assistant was uh she had asthma at the time. Oh my goodness. I was like, this is not, I can't even picture this. Please get us out of here. So we did uh uh make that descent that night. Uh but what that just meant was it made the the it made the situation of the species that we just uh recently rediscovered, by recently, like by a few days rediscovered, it made it really clear to us that we had to do something. Because on the one hand, we hadn't even told anybody what found this species. And remember, this is Nigeria. Everybody in the world thinks, by everybody, I mean people who care about the environment, thinks Nigeria isn't good for much when it comes to the environment. Oh, the oil exploration has destroyed the habitats and and stuff like that. And so, how do you then say, Oh, in this teeny tiny pocket of forest we had left, it's connected to all these other beautiful forests, continues into Cameroon, but uh it's been burnt by fire. How do you even say that? Right, you know, so um I did get into a fairly depressive mode very quickly, and I I called my advisor as soon as we could get out uh from that village, and I said, My PhD is over, and by the way, I saw these species, I kind of I don't even know how where to begin. You know, she's like, Oh, maybe it's not that bad. It's okay, take a few days, take a few weeks, and just you know, so we just kind of went to the next mountain over and just like were at the mountaintop, just lazing about, just like, I what do you do?

SPEAKER_06

Right, you know, like the study site is just burnt down, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02

So I was like, I don't I don't have a PhD, I don't even know what to see about this bad now. So anyway, um so that was what started it. We knew we had to act immediately.

SPEAKER_06

Very comfortable, you're confronted with it, right?

SPEAKER_02

Exactly. It was it you could say we were ignited. You know, yes, we had to and so we we started talking with communities, and uh and as you know, that's kind of how things started.

SPEAKER_06

The the short-tailed round leaf bat is did you know then it its status in like its global status? It it is it it's not only found in Nigeria, it's found elsewhere.

SPEAKER_02

That's true. It's found in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, and it did say in the guidebook that it was known from those two countries, suspected to be in Nigeria but unconfirmed. Suspected because I think one of the sites was quite close to a Nigerian forest, and it was like, if it's in that forest, it's got to be across the border. Because baths don't care for borders.

SPEAKER_06

But the population is quite small.

SPEAKER_02

It is. Uh it's estimated about uh 1500, so about 1,500 individuals. And it and that's really a conservative estimate because of how few individuals were we're finding in the forest.

SPEAKER_06

That's I I mean, I think it it's hard to survey birds and to get a number on birds, but it's even harder on bat. I mean very much so. So you're using capture-recapture kind of analysis and uh or how how do you do it?

SPEAKER_02

Well, so it this is an estimate based off of encounter rates, not so much capture-recapture, because um I haven't still yet to capture recapture another short to around the bat. Right. Just because uh I mean if your density is so low. I mean, my entire PhD of subbing for four years, I only trapped that bat maybe uh 13 times or so. Yeah, you know, and and and we're talking bats where you can get 40 bats in your trap within, I don't know, 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Lots of bats, basically. But then if you're the one in danger things, you know, uh very rare, then that's what it is. But it's also not just encounter rate, but also uh caves. So we've surveyed a ton of caves. So we're maybe coming up on I don't know, 70 plus caves scattered around a really broad area, and you're only finding two or three individuals. Right. Uh, and in fact, the records also state that the people haven't recorded more than 10. I have counted 12, I think I want to say 12-15. I and I say 12-15 because we did see one or two individuals slaughtering, so we're like, maybe it's the same group, but I don't know. So anyway, um, so we're looking at a very small density, they do not occur very frequently across the landscape.

SPEAKER_06

When it comes to surveying, I mean, a a modern thing that's that's happening is is passive audio recording. Is that applicable for bats or or even because I like in Britain the pipistrail bat you can identify them by the different frequencies. Uh it's not something we can hear as humans. Right. But is there techniques like that for bat survey work?

SPEAKER_02

Yes, and you mentioned pipistrail. Whenever I did my master's in the UK, I I worked in the Devon area, so south um southwest uh UK. Uh all I did was listen to a bunch of pipistrail calls. We record the calls at night along the M5, so south of uh Brighton, I think.

SPEAKER_06

Brighton, south of London.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, sorry, not Brighton. South of Benton. Bristol. Bristol, there you go. Okay. South of Bristol. Like there's a lot of B. There's a B something. B and R, there you go. Uh South of Bristol on the M5, on either sides, we would do 20 transects. Okay. So every evening we'll do the walks transects, we have the recordings, we'll come back in the morning, and that was we'll spend our entire day listening to bat calls and trying to identify what they were, listening and um using uh software. So I had a lot of training with bat acoustics uh during that during that time. Um, and uh and I was hoping that this might be useful for finding our bat. But um part of my field work in Nigeria on my PhD was I had one year that was dedicated to uh acoustic only surveys. So I would go into the forest, I've got 45 days, I've got to be out in 45 days, and I would just record bat along the entire mountain uh transect to the elevational gradient that I was working on. And not once did we record this bat. Really? Even though you can find it all the way up to about um uh 800 meters elevation, so uh you know, low to pre-mountain forest. Not once did we record it, and I can tell you the ecology around that. Forest understory bats are really difficult difficult to record in uh using acoustic techniques. Oh, okay. Because they are they're they're there are um eco-locations really tuned to finding what's in front of them, what's very close. Because think about what bat is doing in the forest. It's dealing with immediate concerns. Yeah, if this the the so the call does not travel very far. It's high frequency. There you go, that's what I'm trying to find. It's very high frequency. High frequency calls don't go far. But you know, if you think about other things that would echolocate, say uh dolphins, they're much more low frequency because they're in a water medium, and so that travels farther. You know, that's not with bats. It's so high, much higher than human hearing, obviously, as you know. Um, and so uh detection hard. Your detection capacity becomes severely limited. Right, interesting. So, I mean, what I was doing during those uh surveys was I would be between um I would have five recording stations that were two meter 200 meters apart. With that level of density, we still weren't catching, we still weren't recording um the bats. So even though I I know from the trap uh trapping records that our bat was in the forest, not in the uh in the acoustic uh surveys, yeah, sadly.

SPEAKER_06

With the fire prevention stuff, you've you're working in some pretty innovative ways in that innovative but yet historical. Town criers are part of the approach that you you've taken. Yeah. How did you arrive at those, the different approaches that you've got?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, as you can imagine, it took a while to build. So it was one thing at a time, you know, you sort of stack things up and it it now it looks like this perfect picture. Whereas, you know, uh seven years ago, we were still just uh talking to local community leaders about uh laws, local laws. Uh uh we of course had town cries at that time, but anyway, so I can I can set it up. So the timeline is 2016 fire.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

We chased down, we survived it, thankfully, and then we started talking to community people. Uh and initially we thought it would be really difficult to convince people. And I get asked this all the time. But how did you convince people? Well, it turns out uh fires are not only bad for bats and other wildlife gorillas, uh, you know, drill monkeys, a lot of birds, uh, this uh really endangered um rockfowl. I'm sure you've heard of them.

SPEAKER_05

Um pica fetus.

SPEAKER_02

You know all the birds, don't you? All of them. All of them. Um but it's a really beautiful shy bird. I I saw one once. Okay. Once. I've stayed I've stayed in that forest for so long. I've only seen one. So I uh I I I count that as one of the things in my life that I've I've done. So anyway. Um so lots of endangered species. And so uh it wasn't not only was fire bad for them, but also for local livelihood. Uh in fact, this is uh a very remote part of the country, there's very little government um involvement. You know, government helps, but they don't really do a lot. There's a lot of government neglect. Um but uh essentially not not developed, truly, truly rural communities, and all they do, like it's a hundred percent agriculture. That's that's what drives the economy, that's what the economy is. And so you go from people who do some subsistence farming because everybody has the ease or at least feed their sale to their neighbor, to cash crops, uh primarily cocoa farms and uh some small level of plantation, uh uh oil palm plantations.

SPEAKER_06

Are the farmers the ones that are um initiating fires? Is that to clear ground as the classic stuff?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. So so so there are many ways in which fires have been used in this system. So there's uh as we know, this is all West Africa is slash and burn. Most of the tropics really is you cut down the trees uh by using fires. Uh well you slash some and then you cut and then you set fires to some. Yeah. I mean, if you think about what's going on here, think about a tree that's maybe a hundred years old. So it's it's massive. A lot of trees might either be, you know, that wide. Um and you haven't got the money to get a chainsaw cutter to come, because not everybody has a chainsaw. So there might be maybe five people in the village who who are called chainsaw operators. Right. And so uh they'll you know you can't you can't afford it. So you don't you don't bring them to take down this tree. So the only way to bring the tree down is either to keep cutting with a with an axe for many, many months, uh many weeks at least, yeah, uh, before the one tree comes down. If you wanted to clear some acreage, that's a lot of cotton. Yes. And so fire is the easiest way to bring down a tree.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Now, so that's slash and burn, broadly speaking. But also when your farms are established, uh, with cocoa farming, it's a really interesting ecology here, is that cocoa is a shade-loving tree uh plant. And so what people do is they don't clear everything down. It's once a few trees get taken out to increase some uh the light under the canopy, but a good number of trees are still left standing. But over the years, as your cocoa plant grows bigger and bigger, you do need to start bringing some trees down. So you select which trees to bring down.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

And so how you bring those down is by setting fires to them.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

So there's an ongoing maintenance of the land, a clean of the land. In fact, uh conditioning of the land, too, by people doing subsistence farming. So um people doing uh say uh planting uh uh cassava, for example, uh, or even bananas. Uh in fact, bananas are also one of the sort of gateway plants for uh cash crop like cocoa, because you plant that while your cocoa farm is growing, you can start eating some money from your banana. So, anyway, there's a lot of you know fire use in this landscape. And what typically happens is that there's a cultural way to burn that is safe. You burn just before it's too dry or just after there's been some very early rains. And when I grew up, I used to hear about oh, the first rains. Oh, the first rains have come, but that's usually after a very dry, very, very dry spell. I mean, February is your zero rainfall month typically in these parts, uh southern Nigeria. Um and then right after that, you you might have a few days of a sprinkle of rain. That time is usually when people like to burn because it's just before the the planting season. In fact, it's the it's not really the beginning of the planting season, a couple of weeks, a few weeks before your planting season. So it's best to burn at that time because by the time you're you're you're done, your your um you know, weeds are not coming back almost immediately if you were planting, or indeed um you don't have to clean your farm again, so to speak, before uh the the main sort of uh rainy season takes up. So essentially, what you're dealing with is people knew the best time to burn. Just typically, there was already a calendar, like a mental calendar almost. Yeah, but uh that no longer matches reality, right? And so uh it became a problem with with erratic rainfall patterns. Ah, I see. Yes, okay. So the farmers no longer knew the best time to burn. And so when we talked with them, this was one thing that came up. Not not everybody said it, everybody had their own ideas and they had all the details about, you know, this is what we used to do. We didn't you couldn't burn before 10 o'clock, you couldn't burn after 10 o'clock in the morning because it would be too sunny and it'd be too dry if you wanted to burn, blah, blah, blah. So they had all these things and then, you know, time of year, and then this lady just stood up and said, Well, no. It's true, all these things are true, but the biggest problem is we don't know the best time to burn anymore. If you could just tell us, and I'm like, um, I study that. I don't know anything about fires, you know. So uh, but that was the beginning of the what really cracked it. So cracking it by cracking, I mean cracking the it was uh it was a pivotal moment in in trying to find a solution to what seemed like a complex problem because on the one hand, people need to keep using fires, you can't just tell them to stop, and that's what the government had done for many months, many, many years, in fact.

SPEAKER_06

Uh try to stop, just say stop.

SPEAKER_02

Stop people to stop using fires. That's not gonna happen in a landscape that is heavily, you know, uh hand managed, it's not mechanized at all. This is not a mechanized landscape. I mean, someone can even get a uh a uh a sung uh a saw uh chainsaw operator to come bring down a tree, much less cocoa is a plant that you have to have to harvest by hand and bring down, otherwise there's no mechanized way of harvesting cocoa or managing cocoa farms. You know, so all of those things just meant people were fed up of what what the mismatch between you know the increased either drought or erratic rainfall patterns you could no longer predict. And you know, this lady just asked if you could just tell us when to burn.

SPEAKER_06

So is that what the town cryers are doing?

SPEAKER_02

That's a good question. Because what the town cryers are doing is they're taking the information we tell them because we now predict the best time to burn.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

So we answer this woman's question, we're like, Well, how do you predict? I uh know in my simple statistics of a regression, what a regression model does. So you go plot your historical rainfall patterns with your historical temperature, uh, the temperature rain uh um uh and um and fire events. Yeah, and then you go, how many months or how many weeks or how many days of no rain allows you uh causes fires?

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

And that's what we did. So we did that test, and then we're like, well, we can then go to the daily things and uh collect daily data, daily weather data, and then we can say, Oh, it's been dry for so and so amount of time. So this is uh this is a high risk, uh high risk day, and that's what the town cries then use. Uh, because this is a place again. I painted a picture, it's remote, uh very little, uh, it's a low, what you might call a low-tech environment. Sure, sure. Um, so uh you can't even really use texting all the time. There's a tree. I have photos of people hanging around by a tree where that pulls some um phone cell service. Really? Yeah, I've I've gone to use that if you if you if you're in the forest and you're trying to, you know, rich rich um you know, family or whatever, yeah. Uh that's a tree you would go to to go make a call. That's but it's also close to the village too, so it's not like forest, forest, like on the edge of the forest, but it pulls the cell service. So anyway, um the only way to really communicate is uh town criers, the community people, that's what they use.

SPEAKER_06

And is that that's normal? So it's a normal thing. That's normal.

SPEAKER_02

We did not invent it. No, we were just working with what they had. In fact, uh I didn't even know they still had town criers.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, well, I mean, it's medieval, I think. Right. Well, that's what it makes me think. I'm not a historian, but yeah, certainly, you know, a long time ago.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it was one of the guys in the village who was like, look, if we if we if we put up the signpost, because we had signposts that would tell people, you know, uh what the risk for that day was, we put up the signpost, we we we will reach a good number of people, but there'll be people who may not walk by that signpost that day. We do have this traditional system, is what he told me, of of passing uh information to people and like, oh, tell me, he's like tongue crest. I was like, ah, I've read about those in books, I didn't know those were those still existed, you know. But it makes total sense. If you if you the the whole idea is to communicate, if you can't communicate through Tancrest, so be it. You know, so um so we started paying this guy just a little, you know, like the going rates. We weren't paying him more. It was a going rate uh to to announce something, yeah. Um and and he just does it.

SPEAKER_06

And you've also enlisted sort of uh forest guardians as well. What's their role?

SPEAKER_02

Yes, so their role is a few things. Uh we primarily started out saying, well, they need to respond to fire before it becomes a forest fire. So because the forest fires uh because the fires start on farmlands, it does go on become uncontrollable on the farm uh before it becomes a big uncontrollable fire in the forest. So we were like, well, if we can just respond at the source, which is this farm that's now on fire, or at least it's before they can respond, maybe it's on the next farm, but it's it hasn't become this big, unwieldy thing. Uh then maybe we can truly really bring down the risk, uh risk of wildfires uh in the forest.

SPEAKER_06

So the risk of it expanding and then getting into forests.

SPEAKER_02

Because that's the thing that happened to us in 2016, is this fire was already in the mountain. There was nothing anybody could do. I mean, besides say calling for international help, which would have to make us look. I mean, who wants to go? I don't know. There's there's a long story around international aid with uh uh emergency situations and fires do not count for, at least the Nigerian government at the time, as this thing you call for help for. So these forests burned for three weeks straight. Probably more, but that's all I remember. It's like, my gosh, for three weeks we couldn't breathe, and it was so smoky. And and in fact, when we left and came back, it was still smoky. It was just like wow.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, the impact, and then also the the sort of the uncertainty of not knowing well, like you're saying, like the the for your the implications for your PhD in your case. But if that's your livelihood, your The implications are uncertainty are pretty serious. Yes.

SPEAKER_02

There are people who we've been told uh have you know, died of a broken heart because they just you're if if you if you have a cocoa farm, it's like starting a career. And someone lights a fire to your career is what is what happens if your farm gets burnt. Because cocoa farms, people think of them as 25 year farms, and sometimes in these places actually run for longer. Okay. So if you I mean think of how long is uh is the average career? I mean, I want to say 15 years, you know, uh or 20.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Um so if you're if you're middle aged or older and you get a fire on your farm, that's it. You your career's gone. You it's almost like starting from scratch, really. And if if it wasn't a willing decision, uh uh a voluntary decision to switch careers, that's what you you become depressed fully. And in these places there aren't mental health support, there aren't programs to support people. And so um there are some people who have died by suicide as a result of their farm skin toasts. Really, because it's just everything. Yeah, and then uh there's uh so I'm talking human lives here. There's a woman who was trying to put out a farm by a farm fire by herself. She was pregnant, and we believe she died of exhaustion because she was found by the by the farm uh that had been so so it's so it's it's a lot of this human element to it, uh, from just poverty if your farm gets burned, but also human life uh at risk. Uh there are people who have had injuries trying to put out fires, and those injuries lead to death as well. Yes.

SPEAKER_06

Or you know, long-term issues. It seems very um almost inconceivable. But I had a colleague who, her director of conservation in the DR Democratic Republic of Congo, died after having too uh a tooth toothache or something, like couldn't get medical treatment in time and ended up dying. And that just seems in in our privileged existence in in the Western world, yeah, it it just um seems un unimaginable, but it's a real risk in these places. It's true.

SPEAKER_02

If you go to a lot of the health centers, it doesn't there's they're not open, there's nobody there. Really? There might be a nurse who lives in this village and she might be servicing X number of villages. I think there's a lot of intention to at least provide uh uh immunization and vaccines for kids, and so their vaccination days. Yeah, so those nurses are definitely always on call for that, right? But everything else, you're on your own.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's um incredible. This has actually been a way that you've linked the bats and and people's needs, because it's that same thing. If the if the farmlands burn then and the forest burn, yeah, it's bad for bats and for people. Yeah. Um the and and I think that that's helped you I think being able to connect your conservation work with human needs has been such a uh an insightful thing, and that's allowed you to look at the forest, the global forest alliance. How would we what's it called? The Tropical Fire Alliance. The Tropical Fire Alliance, which is um taking the great work that you've done to scale. Um what what things do you need to happen for it to be as successful in other countries?

SPEAKER_02

That's a good question. And in fact, that's what we're trying to find out in this first uh part of the scale-up, is we're working with a few colleagues in some of the big uh forest blocks in the world, so Indonesia, the Congo, because Nigeria is part of the well where we are in Nigeria is part of the like the westernmost part of the Congo basin, but we're not in the heart of the Congo. So we're working with colleagues in the DRC. Uh, there's a colleague in Madagascar, a couple of colleagues actually. Uh so we're trying to Madagascar. Madagascar has a lot of fires. You're going that wide.

SPEAKER_06

It's not just in the corner of Africa.

SPEAKER_02

No, no, it's the global tropics. Okay. Yeah, that's how far we're going. And uh, and that's what we actually designed for. We went through this uh design program that helped us design to scale. And so the strategy is to take the skeleton model, and that is you predict your risk, you communicate that risk, and then you respond if one fire happens. Okay. Because you really want to get down to zero.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Zero is the target.

SPEAKER_06

And that you've achieved that for four consecutive years. Now five. This is the fifth year. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02

So so that's Coletta model of predict, uh, communicate, respond, or you want to say reduce risk and respond if there's a fire, uh, we're scaling across the geographies. And what needs to happen in these places is really a few things. Where there's the opportunity to protect high-integrity forests either for climate or for biodiversity. That's why Madagascar is really interesting for that for that reason. Uh, if so, even though it's very, very far south and very far from all the uh equatorial forests, it's still really key for that reason.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But then the big equatorial chunks, you know, Congo, uh, Indonesia, uh, Brazil, uh, we are trying to test this uh pilot, this scale up in those geographies to see. And the key things are, like I said, priority forests uh for climate biodiversity, but also uh where the opportunity exists in terms of partners who have a track record of working in those areas, they have a track record of community engagement, community involvement in the work. Uh, because this is very much a community-driven uh arrangement. Because guess what happened during COVID? We, even though we're Nigerians, we were based in Nigeria, we couldn't go to the forest.

SPEAKER_03

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02

You know, so certain things just have to be local. It just has to be the person who's able to jump from their hut next door to go do something or to wherever they live. But they're just like right on the edge of the forest. So that whole idea of being so local is is really crucial. It's part of the what the opportunities we might we consider in this uh identifying uh uh our partners. Uh uh and and that's what we're trying to pilot this first uh time around. But eventually we'll keep like moving away from the equatorial forests, uh not moving away, but keep growing that, expanding, keep growing that network around the equatorial forest until you know you sort of hit 10 10 degrees. Uh uh of course tropical forest is 23 degrees uh north and south of the of the equator. So where you have that, then you know, you uh you have a forest uh that's a high quality, high opportunity, then it becomes a tar is a potential target for reduction. But I I want to say, and this is a thing that I'm I probably don't get across often enough, is the fact that um the the aim is to make sure forests are uh good for biodiversity for people, but also for the climate. Yeah. Because that's the other opportunity too.

SPEAKER_06

Um not really that's the the Goldman Prize is more climate focused, it's more environmental, right? It's certainly more environmental focused, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That's it, it wasn't just for the bats. Yeah, sure, sure. It could have been, it could have been, but not the two. They do deserve the attention. Uh but it was certainly about the the fact that it was also valuable for climate. Um that um and and and you know, just like you were saying earlier, the integration of all these different things. So five years ago, this wouldn't have been, I would never have been a Goldman Prize winner. Just because there's no proof of concept that this even works. Right. But it was made multiple things getting stacked on top of each other. We started with local laws, okay, agreements that we need to do this, and then we started with local laws, and then we got them to make those laws, and then we started with weather, uh collecting the weather data, and then we started communicating that data, and then we started uh uh we had uh town cries, and then we had uh forest guardians who would go around with backpacks, 20 liters of water, uh, and high pumps, uh high pressure pumps, putting out fires. So everything it kept stacking up. It felt like it felt like every year there was a new thing that went on to make this thing comprehensive. But the whole idea is that when you now have this comprehensive model, science, the community, you know, the impact, uh and then you're suddenly ready to scale it, and then you get into the scale program, um, as I did. Uh, and and then before you know it, it's ready to go global.

SPEAKER_06

It's amazing. I wasn't thinking global, honestly. Well, actually, I think I mean your dad said that scientists are focusing on one thing. And you've but you've done a lot of science, and so you're focused on this one thing. What do you think it is that has um enabled you to be so innovative and to bring these different ideas together?

SPEAKER_02

Thank you. Um I have to admit that my mom, who I rarely mention, she she has this nothing's impossible approach to life. I'm not making this up. It's literally is her is her um uh regular go-to line. Like, oh, there's it's almost like saying there are many ways to skin a rat. She literally lives by that. It's like, oh, um you know, there were five cups on the table and no cups are available right now, but people need to drink water. Well, go wash the cups. It sounds like that's an easy. Oh, there's nowhere to wash the cups. Okay, well, can we put plastic bags in the cup to drink so people can drink water hygienically? You know, there's always a way to solve a problem. Right. You can't say there are no cups, so we can't drink water. You've got to solve that problem. So, anyway, um, she always had that, and I grew up watching her do this, and uh, in fact, uh watching her do it with skill uh and enthusiastically with a smile on her face. I'm talking from all kinds of things from just everyday life, but also economic uh issues. So we we I grew up in in a time when Nigeria was uh primarily military regime and then transitioning to become a democratically led country. During the military regimes, it was really hard to get by in life. And so my mom would do all kinds of trades, and and she would say, she would say, you know, there's no there's nothing um there's nothing she couldn't do to help to help her family succeed. So that just signaled to me, you know, like there's always a way. There's always a way. You could say that too. It's like not just a skinning a rat, which I'm not looking to skin a rat, there's always a way when there's a wheel. And um that also meant that in our case with this uh fire, if the mission is to stop fires, then we must find everything we need to stop the fires. And coming from a um from a scientific tradition of using questions to ask a system to probe a system, okay, what do we do here? So this lady has said um if we could tell them when to burn. In that sentence alone, there were a few things. There was the data, so we had to collect that data. We had to tell to communicate that data. And then um, after doing those things, if things are still not working, you must respond because you can't afford another fire.

SPEAKER_06

Right.

SPEAKER_02

You know, so so it gradually got stacked up. I was a poor PhD student, I couldn't do everything at once. Uh, I was also, again, a PhD student who needed to focus on my PhD. Uh, I I don't think I always had my made my advisor happy every time.

SPEAKER_05

Me too, yeah. For getting distracted. I think I think we're I launched a website where people could pay to watch videos from inside the plant nests. And then I was like, yeah, but what's that gonna do with my PhD?

SPEAKER_02

Oh my god, yeah. Um, well, but thankfully the same advisors also, you know, eventually, like, okay, Sam, this is your life. Do whatever you want with it. Or I see what you're doing, but maybe focus a little bit. And so I did have some time of just I okay, I'm not gonna do conservation for now, I'm just gonna focus. Um, and I had I did have that, and then COVID also happened, so that allowed me to just focus, even though during those times it was very much a I hope this is not the day I get called and get told that fire has taken this forest. Sure. Because you know, when you're working to try to save it for uh however long that was. So um, so that the whole idea of where the innovation came from was um uh a question to do with my growing up seeing my mom very being very innovative in life, but also the the the concept of being um mission focused, right? If you have a mission, you can do two things that might save, that might you know solve maybe 70% of that mission, but you've also got that 30% left. What are you gonna do? If it's a system where 30% is safe, I think that's okay.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_02

You know, you design for 70%, but in our system we had to get to 100%. And so you kept stacking things up, and that's what we did.

SPEAKER_06

Great. I'm trying to picture that there's dispersed villages, the town cries are going. Um how how does your team interact with the to spread the word and to do you must be doing education work as well. Um tell me a little bit more about the operations on the ground.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my gosh, it's a huge uh operation. In fact, uh, someone described us as this is a huge military operation. I'm like, yeah, I agree with you 100%. Uh, because we're talking, uh we're nearly at about 200 people total. Uh really? People in the office and people in the communities. Because we're not only doing fires, we're also doing a few other things. Uh we're we're doing a lot of restoration of the fire damage habitat.

SPEAKER_06

This is the the Jura Jura. Uh yeah, I've heard this in the in one of your presentations, I think. What are the women called?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, uh the Kuja women.

SPEAKER_06

Kuja women. There you go.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So the Kuja women are Kuja is the word for forest in Bukhi language, and this is uh started with uh the Buki people. Uh yeah, people around Affi Mountain are Bukhi uh language speaking people.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

And so uh we asked them what's the word for forest? And they're like Kuja. We're like, ah, sounds hot. So so they've been restoring the forests uh in places that have been uh damaged by fires. Uh hopefully to reduce takeover, because that's what happens sometimes when there's a fire, people come take over the land. Okay, right. So we're we're we've worked with the communities, they agree with us, they're like, yeah, go go restore the land, and it's you know, so that gets set up. But you know, it it we also have a few other things we're doing at SmackCon besides fires. We we try to reduce, um, we do a lot of demand reduction for bat meat because of many things, uh, not only the biodiversity, but just the biosafety issues, health issues.

SPEAKER_06

To prevent the next pandemic.

SPEAKER_02

To prevent the next pandemic, thank you. Uh and so uh that has involved uh building three different uh pilot farms. And so there's a strong team of people uh leading that, including vets, but also uh local people uh who take care of the animals and just keep them going until they're market-sized and ready to go. So so there's that uh there's the Kuja women you're talking about who do restoration with 50 people uh across just a fee mountain. We're about to set up another Kuja women group. So the next time we'll have this meeting, it might be 300 people. Sorry, saying that. That's amazing. Fantastic. So the team really does grow in that sense, and uh, you know, our managers are just the absolute best. They it almost feels as if they've come at this with just amount, the right amount of passion and intensity of energy, of interest, and everything you really need to get. You know how field operations are. You you kind of need people with yeah, it's really tough, especially for little money too, which I'm not gonna get into. But um we have it's a challenge of conservation. We have the most, the most passionate people ever. And in fact, we get asked by other NGOs, like, where do you find your people? We're like, well, we we go through a lot of people too. Right. You know, it's not it's not easy. We do a lot of recruiting.

SPEAKER_06

But I'm sure there's a there's an element of good leadership that uh brings people together and brings people up, and um, yeah, and and that isn't an accident. So I'm sure I'm sure that's something that you bring to. Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_02

I appreciate it. I have to just say some of it involves waking up in the morning and starting with your emails once you go to bed. So it's a lot of responding and correcting and checking in.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, yeah, for sure. But and so you've got you've got people in what are some of the other roles that are you're in your team and not just in the field. Um, you've got office, yeah, office staff keeping everything running.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah. So we've had we had our patients uh manager for a long time. He just made sure the cars were going, you know, the schedules were running. Uh if someone needed to go see a government official, they were there on time. If somebody was traveling in from you know a foreign country, they got the right visas for a long time. We we had that person, and he's now become um uh in fact our associate director. Right. So he's gone to that level now, sort of running uh an operations team that makes sure all of these things are working. There's so much going on behind the scenes. There's so much going on behind the scenes. Yes. You need diesel in the truck and the truck needs to run sets in the I think I think nobody told me this. I mean, maybe if they had told me, maybe I would have kind of given up, but nobody told me there's not the first to say that. Maybe I would have given up if someone has said, you know, there's all these other things that you have to do, because I was just thinking about my bats and the fires. But uh, so there's that. Uh, and then there is also uh communications. You you do have to get the word out. The person who nominated me for the Goldman Prize, I believe they may have seen our communication material somewhere online because I never met this person. Right. Had no absolutely no prior connections, not at a conference, not at any kind of interaction. And suddenly, um, well, my husband played a role in this. It was like a CIA operation for several months. I didn't know what was going on. I was nominated and he was feeding them information and or connecting them to the right person to get told uh what what what to address some question or the other. But you know, the point being communication is such a critical part of our work. Um uh not just communication in the I'm not just talking about the town cries, I'm talking about communicating our stuff to the general public. Uh uh there's also education and outreach. All of these people, these are all functional teams. We have individuals doing different things, but then we have functional teams of people who come together and mix up work. Just an absolutely incredible group of people. We get asked a lot, where do you find them? We're like, I don't know. They're they're in they're in Calaba, they're in the next city over. But in the real case, they do people do find us too, because you know they love what we do and they want to be part of this beautiful story. And I I feel privileged and grateful for that. I I don't I don't think we'll be able to do what we're doing without these people.

SPEAKER_06

What advice would you give um young African women who are considering a career in conservation? I think this is a nice moment to off building off like the things you've done and the way you've approached things. How would you encourage them and what would what advice would you give?

SPEAKER_02

I would say the first thing I would say is don't listen to the voice that says you can't do it. Not even if it's your if it's your dear father, your dear papa. He thinks you can't do it, don't don't listen to him. Not not to even talk about you know the naysayers. They will always be naysayers who are like either a government person is like, no, we don't do that here, and you're like, but there is this problem and this is a solution. How about that? Um so you do you need to um I want to say rise above those um those uh types of setbacks that are about your capacity to do something or or the fact that it's never been done, it's never gonna happen. Don't believe them. Um especially if you see a clear path forward. If you see a clear path forward, follow that path. And uh don't ever, at least if I'm speaking from my experience, don't ever assume that you you have the answers or you have all the answers. Our answers came in many different ways. We had the local people, these local women say, tell us when to burn. I didn't immediately have the answers. It was during a field survey to trap rodents in uh in Texas, West Texas, that I uh and actually that we went into New Mexico as well, and I saw a sign that was a fire sign in a beautiful part of uh New Mexico uh called Rubidoza. And it basically it was saying uh the fire risk for that day.

SPEAKER_06

Like the bear and the the red. Smokey the bear campaign in the US.

SPEAKER_02

And I thought, isn't this what this woman is asking for? Without she didn't use this, she didn't say smokey the bear, she didn't know what smokey the bear was. She's never I I don't think she still knows what smokey the bear is.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um but I saw that and I was like, that's the the the story behind that is science. Oh, I I know a bit of regression uh analysis, I can do some statistics and I can then use that to tell her, you know, how to, you know, uh burn the best time to burn. And that's that's what we did. But uh um w all that to say you you're never gonna be the expert uh at anything or not at anything, at everything you need to solve a problem. You might know the bats, as I did. You might have your love for the bats, your love for the science. Uh, and then you start from there, that's where you are. In fact, uh the Goldman Prize uh tagline was uh change starts where you are.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_02

And that's exactly what I would say to young African women is don't listen to those voices, but then recognize that you don't always have all the solutions. Find either the people, the situations, the scenarios that you can interpret to help you find those solutions. And of course, uh your network is everything. I mean, I can't even begin to tell you the number of people who have either supported me, you know, obviously financially funds and and all that, but also mentors. My gosh, I I uh I didn't I didn't you know suddenly become this scientist. I I had a really good uh PhD advisor. She's like the best when it comes to really nailing down your science, being really critical of your work, and really saying, is this what does this address the question? You know, and then there were people who were also very uh helpful with strategy and figuring out how to apply for a grant. I didn't know how to apply for grants. A lot of people taught me that. Um as my as did my PhD advisor. All of these things sort of stack up, and then there were government people that you have to go talk to and be nice to, even though you don't want to give a bribe, you you go and laugh with them. Right. You know, it's it's it's an emotional bribe and it's all right, but you're you're not you're not doing something criminal. You're you're winning them over.

SPEAKER_06

You're winning them over, which I'm sure you have no trouble doing.

SPEAKER_02

I try, I try. But you know, it's all of those things, and before you know it, you have this whole system that allows you to to make a difference.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. Well, I think you must be an incredible inspiration for African women. I love the way that you're your openness to bringing in all these different things. And I just uh want to say a huge thank you for the work that you're doing. And uh I think you're amazing. I think so. Thank you, Sam.

SPEAKER_02

I was very glad to chat with. Thank you. I appreciate it. And um thanks for having me.