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'Green Nobel' winner Iroro Tanshi found love and her life's work saving bats in West Africa

09:44

Here & Now Newsroom

April 20, 2026

Iroro Tanshi stands for a portrait near a limestone cave in Etankpini village in Odukpani, Cross River State on Feb. 16, 2024. Tanshi is a bat ecologist and the co-executive founder of Small Mammals Conservation Organization (SMACON). SMACON is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting small mammals and their habitat through research and evidence based conservation. (Courtesy of The Goldman Environmental Prize)

Ten years ago, Iroro Tanshi found something incredible in a cave in Nigeria: a colony of short-tailed roundleaf bats, a species that hadn’t been seen there in almost 50 years.

Her discovery helped kickstart a conservation movement in West Africa to protect rare species of bats from threats like poaching and wildfires. For that work, she’s one of the winners of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize.

Tanshi joined Here & Now's Scott Tong to talk about her work.

Iroro Tanshi examines the wing feature of the giant round leaf bat during the Morphometric data collection of the captured bats in Etankpini village in Odukpani, Cross River State. (Courtesy of The Goldman Environmental Prize)

This segment aired on April 20, 2026.

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