Iroro Tanshi

A True Sanctuary

The 24,700-acre Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary in southeastern Nigeria’s Cross River State was established in 2000 to protect its rich forests and endangered species. Together with the adjacent 95,400-acre Afi River Forest Reserve, the area contains the country’s largest remaining rainforests, which are relatively free of the logging seen in many other parts of Nigeria.

These lush forests are home to critically-endangered gorillas, chimpanzees, drill monkeys, grey-necked rockfowl, and—notably—numerous species of African bat. Once thought to be extinct in the region, the endangered short-tailed roundleaf bat was re-discovered in 2016 in the sanctuary, where it has formed small colonies of 10-15 individuals each. The area’s networks of caves and foraging provide a rich stronghold for the bats, whose global population is estimated to be under 1,500.

Long shunned and feared in Nigeria and around the world, bats are significantly misunderstood. Some see them as meat, others as bewitched or bothersome. But, far from being pests, bats are key contributors to their ecosystems, consuming insects, dispersing seeds, and pollinating plants.

Also living near the sanctuary are 16 rural communities, numbering about 27,000 people. These traditional hunters and subsistence farmers—growing cacao, plantains, and cassava—burn brush to improve their crop yields, as they have for generations. Unfortunately, the effects of climate change and hotter, drier weather—combined with shrinking forestlands and human encroachment—have increased the incidence of controlled burns turning into wildfires.

These wildfires—now especially common during the January to April dry season—have become a primary threat to the sanctuary’s bats and their habitats. Even minimal smoke disturbance can lead a bat colony to permanently abandon a roost. Because rural communities in the region lacked firefighting resources, wildfires often burned until rain fell or the fuel load ran out, leading to catastrophic damage and displacement for both people and wildlife.

A Bat Enthusiast

Iroro Tanshi, 41, is a Nigerian conservation ecologist dedicated to protecting West Africa’s endangered bats and their habitats. She grew up in Warri—an industrial, oil-producing town in southern Nigeria with limited green spaces—and sparked an early passion for wildlife by watching nature documentaries. In college, she studied environmental science and began to see the impacts of the oil industry on nature and communities.

Iroro’s work is now focused on protecting bats and their roosting caves, restoring forest ecosystems, and involving local communities in wildfire mitigation and conservation efforts to promote biodiversity and sustainable livelihoods. In 2016, she co-founded the Small Mammal Conservation Organization (SMACON), where she serves as co-executive director. She won the Future for Nature Award in 2020; the Whitley Award in 2021; the Pritzker Genius Award in 2023; and the Henry Arnhold Fellowship in 2025.

In 2016, while conducting surveys of more than 30 caves within Cross River National Park and the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary, Iroro was astonished to discover a small roost of short-tailed roundleaf bats. Later that year, she captured one, confirming the species’ presence in Nigeria for the first time in 45 years. These endangered bats, which hadn’t been documented anywhere globally for five years, have large ears, round button noses, and live on fruit, pollen, nectar, and insects.

A Fragile Balance

Just two weeks after Iroro’s discovery of the short-tailed roundleaf bats in the sanctuary, her “earthshattering excitement” gave way to dismay, as a devastating wildfire swept through the forest, burning thousands of acres and forcing Iroro and her team to evacuate.

Upset by the setback and deeply concerned about the increased incidence of wildfires in the region, Iroro and her team at SMACON were determined to protect the bats and their forest habitats from wildfires. Committed to improving wildfire prevention in the area, Iroro and her team educated themselves on the subject. She independently studied fire data and monitoring systems used in the American West, learned about firefighting techniques through a program affiliated with the US Forest Service, and purchased remote firefighting gear, including 20-liter backpacks with high pressure hoses.

In 2017, Iroro and SMACON launched the Zero Wildfire Campaign with local communities, conducting surveys to understand the causes of fires, examining laws, studying previous efforts and why they had failed, and educating farmers and community members on best practices. Ultimately, Iroro and her team trained residents of five villages to lead efforts in their own communities.

Through extensive meetings and surveys, SMACON learned that most burns were set intentionally—linked to land clearing, hunting, or traditional farming practices, and compounded by erratic rainfall patterns—but often escalated uncontrollably. With this knowledge, the team worked directly with village leaders to draft community-based forest laws, establishing rules and penalties to regulate burning. In one community, fines of up to $200 were imposed on offenders, with revenue reinvested locally. These laws gave communities a sense of ownership of the campaign, grounding it not as an external conservation effort but as a system of locally enforced stewardship that aligned conservation with immediate community benefits.

At the same time, Iroro and her team invested in building wildfire early-warning detection and rapid response systems. Beginning in January 2022, her team installed five weather stations in the five communities to collect daily data on temperature, humidity, and wind conditions. The data fed into a fire-risk model that produced daily assessments, which were then communicated through color-coded signposts placed in villages—green for safe, yellow for caution, and red for high danger (as borrowed from systems used in New Mexico and California). Farmers were trained to interpret this early warning system. When red days were identified, Iroro’s team deployed “town criers” who would announce the no-burning notice with the aid of a loud gong and a high-pitched voice at daybreak.

Simultaneously, SMACON trained and equipped 50 community “forest guardians,” who patrolled high-risk zones during red-flag days. They were trained in firefighting using water backpacks, small GPS devices, and two-way radios. Iroro and her team also established a field station that doubles as a fire command center, and equipped guardians with fire boots and, for some, motorcycles. The forest guardians have patrolled at least 2,400 farms since January 2023. Motivated to protect their livelihoods and natural environment, community members were quick to adopt the new strategies.

As part of the campaign, Iroro also launched an education program for children in the communities, introducing kids to bat conservation and fire prevention through classroom activities, storytelling, and field visits. These lessons, combined with community meetings and public dialogues, fostered a generational shift in attitudes toward bats and toward fire use in farming and hunting practices.

A New Bulwark against Wildfires

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. 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.

By mobilizing grassroots, community-led action, Iroro has created a powerful and positive model in which conservation and community well-being are inseparable. The alternate path was all too real.

Today, Iroro continues her conservation and wildfire mitigation work in Cross River State. She and her team have identified at least 10 more bat species in the region over the last two years. They are now designing a program to scale up firefighting programs across Nigeria and other countries to expand the model of conservation and community resilience joined at the hip.