Deep within the rainforests of Cross River State, where mist hangs over ancient caves and endangered wildlife clings to survival, Nigerian conservation ecologist Iroro Tanshi has built an unlikely movement, one that protects both bats and people from devastating wildfires.
On April 20, 2026, Tanshi received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for wildfire prevention and her groundbreaking conservation work in southeastern Nigeria.
But long before the applause in San Francisco, her journey began with a frightening moment in a burning forest.
At the heart of her work lies the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary, a 24,700-acre protected rainforest established in 2000.
Together with the neighbouring Afi River Forest Reserve, the sanctuary contains some of Nigeria’s last relatively untouched rainforest ecosystems, home to endangered gorillas, chimpanzees, drill monkeys, and rare bat species.
Among those species is the elusive short-tailed roundleaf bat, a tiny, endangered mammal once feared extinct in Nigeria.
Species Rediscovery
For Tanshi, rediscovering the species in 2016 was a defining moment.
“There is a loss that comes from just knowing that you can’t truly communicate how you’re feeling about something to somebody else,” she said.
Working alongside local assistants inside the caves of Cross River, Tanshi captured evidence confirming the bat’s existence in Nigeria for the first time in 45 years.
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At the time, the species had not been documented globally for five years, and scientists believed fewer than 1,500 remained in the wild.
The discovery was both a scientific triumph and an emotional breakthrough. Yet the celebration quickly turned into devastation.
“The only thing I said to them was, ‘Our lives are about to change,’” she said.
Just two weeks after the rediscovery, a massive wildfire tore through the sanctuary, engulfing large sections of forest and forcing Tanshi and her team to flee their campsite with cloths pressed tightly over their mouths to survive the smoke.
When the fires finally subsided weeks later, thousands of acres had been destroyed.
“How do you tell people that perhaps one of the only known populations of this species’ habitat was on fire? There’s some kind of shame and loss,” Tanshi said.
The experience transformed her mission entirely.
Trajectory Into Purpose
Born and raised in Warri, Delta State, Tanshi developed a fascination with wildlife through television documentaries despite growing up in an industrial oil-producing environment with limited green spaces.
Studying environmental science later exposed her to the damaging effects of oil exploration and environmental degradation on communities.
That passion eventually led her to co-found the Small Mammal Conservation Organisation (SMACON) in 2016, where she now serves as co-executive director.
Determined to stop future forest destruction, Tanshi began studying wildfire management systems from around the world.
She researched fire-monitoring techniques used in the United States, undertook training linked to the US Forest Service, and introduced practical firefighting tools into rural Cross River communities.
But rather than impose outside solutions, she chose to work with local people.
Around the sanctuary live about 27,000 residents across 16 rural communities, many dependent on subsistence farming. For generations, farmers have used controlled bush burning to clear land and improve crop yields for cassava, cocoa, and plantain cultivation.
The problem, Tanshi discovered, was not the tradition itself but climate change.
Erratic rainfall patterns and hotter, drier seasons had disrupted traditional knowledge systems, causing fires that were once manageable to spiral into destructive wildfires.
“There’s a critical point where there’s just enough moisture on the forest floor, in the soil, that allows your fires to proceed really slowly, at low intensity,” Tanshi explained.
She added, “One lady said, ‘Just tell us the best time to burn. The weather has changed.’ She was talking about climate change without using the formal scientific term.”
Wildfire Campaign, Forest Guardians
In response, she launched the Zero Wildfire Campaign in 2017.
The initiative combined science, education, and grassroots leadership. Weather stations were installed across communities to monitor humidity, wind, and temperature.
Daily fire-risk warnings were displayed using colour-coded systems, green for safe conditions, yellow for caution, and red for extreme danger.
On high-risk days, town criers moved through villages sounding gongs and announcing no-burning warnings before dawn.
At the same time, SMACON trained 50 local “forest guardians” equipped with water backpacks, GPS devices, radios, and protective gear to patrol vulnerable areas.
Between early 2022 and May 2025, the forest guardians responded to 74 fire outbreaks before they escalated into catastrophic wildfires. Thousands of farms were monitored, while the sanctuary’s fragile ecosystems, including the bats’ cave habitats, remained protected.
Turning Perceptions Into Conservation
In parts of Nigeria, bats are often viewed negatively, linked to folklore, superstition, witchcraft, disease, and traditional beliefs that label them as agents of evil and harbingers of doom.
Beyond firefighting, Tanshi also worked to change these perceptions, encouraging people to see bats as important wildlife rather than symbols of evil or misfortune.
In schools and community centres, children were introduced to bat conservation through storytelling, classroom activities, and guided field visits. Slowly, attitudes began to shift.
Today, the ecologist’s work represents far more than wildlife protection. It has become a model showing how environmental conservation and community survival can coexist.
One encounter with a cocoa farmer remains especially memorable.
“You saved my farm,” the farmer told her.
For Tanshi, those four words captured the deeper meaning of her mission.
“You’re thinking, ‘Well, I was actually trying to save the bats.’ But now I see that because we took your solutions that were very much about saving your livelihood, now we get to celebrate that opportunity together.
“That’s the rewarding part, that we can bring change to both bats and local people, to forests and local people, to climate and local people. Wherever people are, you can take a stand to make a change,” she said.
As climate threats grow across Africa and beyond, Tanshi and her team are exploring ways to expand their wildfire prevention model to countries including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, and Indonesia.
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