Iroro Tanshi’s passion for protecting wildlife grew through the cracks of her childhood in an industrial, oil-producing town in southern Nigeria. Her efforts to protect an endangered bat has led to an international award for wildfire prevention across her community.

While her community had few green spaces, her love for nature was kindled through documentaries. Her environmental science degree allowed her to put what she saw on screen into action, leading her to become a wildfire mitigator and ecologist, and recently being awarded the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize.

Her notoriety came after she discovered a roost of endangered bats in 2016, which hadn’t been documented globally in five years and hadn’t been seen in Nigeria for over 45 years. The short-tailed roundleaf bats have large ears, round button noses, and live on fruit, pollen, nectar, and insects.

Just two weeks after her discovery, a devastating wildfire swept through the forest, causing Tanshi to commit to improving wildfire prevention in the area and launching the Zero Wildfire Campaign. The effort resulted in residents of five villages leading wildfire-prevention efforts in their own communities and the creation of an early-warning wildfire detection system.

“Under Iroro’s leadership, community forest guardians responded to 74 fire outbreaks on farms from early 2022 to spring 2025, successfully preventing any of them from escalating into unmanageable wildfires,” officials with the Goldman Environmental Prize wrote in a blog post. “Her Zero Wildfire Campaign has safeguarded the biodiverse 24,700-acre Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary from devastating wildfires, protecting Nigeria’s stronghold for short-tailed roundleaf bats. At the same time, the program has secured the crops and livelihoods of roughly 27,000 people in 16 surrounding communities.”

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