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Wadja Egnankou

Issue: Forests

Nat Quansah

An ethnobotanist, Nat Quansah reintroduced the use of native plants as medicine to thousands of Malagasy people in an Ambodisakoana clinic he opened, educating the community about the need for forest conservation.

Rodolfo Montiel

Along with colleague Teodoro Cabrera, Rodolfo Montiel Flores was arrested and tortured for organizing peaceful protests of logging that was devastating farmlands. Both men were jailed for more than two years on trumped-up charges.

Samuel Nguiffo

Using his expertise as an attorney, Samuel Nguiffo founded the Center for Environment and Development, which helps forest-dwelling peoples exercise their legal right to manage traditional lands.

Atherton Martin

Atherton Martin successfully organized opposition to halt a copper mine that would have devastated 10 percent of the original tropical rainforests still covering Dominica, known as Nature Island for its rich biodiversity.

Paul Cox & Fuiono Senio

Paul Cox and Fuiono Senio worked to preserve a 30,000-acre rainforest by developing economic alternatives for villagers who saw the forest as their only source for income.

Loir Botor Dingit

Paramount Chief of the Bentian Tribal Council in East Kalimantan, Loir Botor Dingit led rattan farmers in sustainable forest management, a campaign that generated national attention and won government support for forest dwellers’ rights.

Marina Silva

A central figure in deforestation protests with the late Chico Mendes, Marina Silva helped establish a 2-million-hectare reserve managed by traditional communities.

Colleen McCrory

Colleen McCrory led an impassioned fight to protect the world’s largest remaining temperate rainforest in British Columbia and the northern boreal forests.

Evaristo Nugkuag

Evaristo Nugkuag, a member of Peru’s Aguaruna tribe, organized his people to creative alliances at local, national and international levels to protect indigenous rights and the environment.

Wadja Egnankou

A scientist from the Ivory Coast, Wadja Egnankou was, for a long time, the lone voice in the struggle to protect the remains of this West African country’s once abundant coastal mangrove forests.