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

WBUR | By Here & Now Newsroom
Published April 20, 2026 at 12:01 PM EDT

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)
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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 article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2026 WBUR
Here & Now Newsroom