Highlights - RACHEL ASHEGBOFEH IKEMEH - Whitley Award Winner - Founder of Southwest Niger Delta Forest Project

"So the whole community has known this guy as the most prolific hunter, and today he is preaching conservation of wildlife, Telling everyone "I loved animals. Animals are the best. They are wonderful ." So it's easier for the community to change their mindset about eating bush meat or about hunting or about destroying the forest wildlife if they're part of the process. You can't do it outside of them. You actively have to make sure they're participating in the entire process, that's where we've seen the best results. That's when we've seen the most progress. And I've also heard of people coming up with very technical step-by-step details of how things ought to go and leaving the people out and leaving indigenous communities out of that same process. And feel like it would be so difficult to sustain that system of doing diverse conservation."

Rachel Ashegbofeh Ikemeh is a Whitley Award-winning conservationist and Founder/Director at the Southwest Niger Delta Forest Project, a grassroots-focused conservation initiative that has been dedicated to the  protection of fragile wildlife populations and habitat across her project sites in Africa’s most populous nation. Rachel won the award in 2020 for her work on chimpanzee populations in Nigeria and is aiming to secure 20% of chimpanzee habitat in Southwest Nigeria. She is also the winner of the National Geographic Society Buffet Awards for Conservaton Leadership in Africa, a Tusk Conservation Awards Finalist.

She works to protect some of the most highly threatened forest habitats and primate populations in southern Nigeria. For example, Rachel’s determined efforts has helped to bring back a species from the brink of extinction – the rare and critically endangered Niger Delta red colobus monkey, also, considered one of 25 most endangered primates in the world. She has helped to establish two protected areas and have also taken on the management of these PAs to restore habitats in these very highly threatened ecosystems which are also areas of high-security risks in the country.

Rachel is the Co-Vice Chair for the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group African Section and Member of the International Primatological Society (IPS) education committee. Through her strategic positions in these networks, Rachel has been committed to championing the need to increase conservation leadership amongst Africans as she co-founded the African Primatological society in 2017. She’s trained the 55 persons that make up her team from local institutions and local communities.

https://swnigerdeltaforestproject.org.ng

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