She told Focus on Africa that her team suspects the fire that triggered her campaign was started by a farmer trying to clear land near the forest.<\/p>\n
“That fire burned for about three weeks until the rain came. There was nothing people could do – we just kept watching it every day,” she said, explaining that people work with them because they “just want to deal with the problem of wildfires on their farms as well”.<\/p>\n
Tanshi and her community fire brigades have prevented serious wildfires from breaking out in and around the 24,700-acre Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary between 2022 and May 2025, according to the global Goldman Environmental Prize.<\/p>\n
As well as educating local people on wildfires and prevention, the campaign also works to inform people about the importance of bats in nature.<\/p>\n
In Nigeria, bats are commonly associated with witchcraft and are feared, but she and her team engages with the community through “multiple forms of media” with a particular focus on children.<\/p>\n
“We don’t shy away from those conversations,” Tanshi said, explaining that bats contribute to their ecosystems, such as by dispersing seeds and pollinating plants.<\/p>\n
“Your shea butter that a lot of people use – either raw or in cosmetic products around the world – is because of bats, which disperse the seeds of the tree,” she said.<\/p>\n
“So essentially, you come to see that they play so many critical roles, it’s almost impossible to ignore them.”<\/p>\n
Tanshi called it an “incredible honour” to win the award.<\/p>\n
“There are very few things in this world that signal to you that the work that you’re doing has global relevance than things like this.”<\/p>\n
She is one of six winners of the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize. For the first time in its 37-year history, all the winners are female.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She told Focus on Africa that her team suspects the fire that triggered her campaign was started by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-541299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}