When Iroro Tanshi first told her family she planned to dedicate her career to studying bats, the response was silence. Then concern. Then outright warnings.

In Nigeria, as across much of West Africa, bats occupy a precarious position in the cultural imagination — associated with dark magic, death omens, and malevolent spirits. The Yoruba word for bat, adán, appears in proverbs about things that operate in darkness. Market vendors won't touch them. Children are taught to fear their silhouettes against the dusk sky.

None of this deterred Tanshi. And on Monday, her persistence was recognized with the Goldman Environmental Prize, often called the "Green Nobel," awarded annually to grassroots environmental activists from six continental regions.

According to the prize announcement, Tanshi's work has fundamentally altered how bat conservation operates across Nigeria and neighboring countries, establishing the first comprehensive research programs for the mammals in the region and training a new generation of African ecologists to continue the work.

The Ecological Case for Bats

Tanshi's advocacy rests on a simple ecological truth that most Nigerians never learned: bats are keystone species whose disappearance would trigger cascading environmental consequences.

Fruit bats pollinate the iroko and baobab trees that anchor West African forests. Insectivorous species consume millions of agricultural pests nightly, providing natural pest control worth billions of naira to farmers. Their guano enriches soils and supports cave ecosystems that harbor rare invertebrates found nowhere else.

"When people understand that bats protect their crops, that they're essentially free farm labor working the night shift, the conversation changes," Tanshi told researchers in a 2024 interview, as reported by BBC News.

But getting Nigerians to have that conversation required Tanshi to first overcome barriers that would have stopped most conservationists before they began.

Fieldwork in the Shadows

Tanshi's research focused on cave-dwelling bat populations in Nigeria's Middle Belt region, where limestone formations create the kind of roosting sites that support large colonies. These caves are often considered spiritually dangerous places by local communities — locations where traditional healers perform rituals, where the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds grows thin.

Her early fieldwork involved hiking into remote areas, often alone or with a single research assistant, to conduct population surveys and collect biological samples. The work required entering dark, confined spaces filled with thousands of bats — and doing so in communities where such behavior marked her as either reckless or possibly involved in occult practices herself.

According to colleagues who worked with her, Tanshi developed a patient, methodical approach to community engagement. She would spend weeks in villages before beginning research, attending community meetings, explaining her work to traditional leaders, and inviting skeptical locals to observe her methods.

She also trained local young people as research assistants, creating economic opportunities in areas with few formal employment options and building a constituency of community members who could explain bat ecology in local languages and cultural contexts.

Conservation Through Education

Beyond her research, Tanshi established educational programs in Nigerian schools, developing curricula that taught children about bat ecology while respectfully addressing cultural beliefs.

Her approach didn't dismiss traditional knowledge systems or mock spiritual beliefs. Instead, she worked with traditional healers and community elders to reframe bats within existing cultural narratives — emphasizing their role as protectors of the forest, as creatures whose nighttime activities maintain natural balance.

The strategy proved effective. Several communities that initially resisted her presence eventually became active partners in bat conservation, establishing protected areas around important roosting sites and monitoring colonies for signs of disturbance.

A Broader Impact

Tanshi's work arrives at a critical moment for African bat populations. White-nose syndrome, the fungal disease that has devastated North American bat populations, has not yet reached Africa, but increased international travel and climate change raise the risk. Meanwhile, habitat loss from deforestation and agricultural expansion continues to shrink available roosting sites.

Her research has also contributed to the broader scientific understanding of African bat diversity. Several of her surveys documented species in regions where they had never been recorded before, expanding the known ranges of vulnerable populations.

The Goldman Prize, which comes with a $200,000 award, recognizes activists who have achieved significant, lasting environmental victories often at great personal risk. Previous winners have included indigenous leaders fighting illegal logging, farmers opposing industrial pollution, and scientists documenting environmental crimes.

For Tanshi, the recognition represents validation not just of her work but of a conservation approach that takes cultural context seriously — that understands environmental protection in Africa cannot succeed through Western models alone but must engage with local knowledge, beliefs, and economic realities.

What Comes Next

Tanshi has indicated she will use the prize money to expand her training programs for African ecologists and establish a regional bat research network spanning Nigeria, Cameroon, and Ghana.

She also plans to continue the community-level work that has defined her career — the patient village meetings, the school visits, the slow process of changing minds one conversation at a time.

"Conservation isn't about loving animals more than people," she said in her prize acceptance remarks. "It's about showing people that protecting these creatures means protecting themselves — their farms, their forests, their future."

In a region where environmental challenges often seem overwhelming and where conservation can feel like a luxury poor communities cannot afford, Tanshi's work offers a different model: grassroots, culturally grounded, and built on the understanding that saving ecosystems requires first changing the stories people tell about the creatures that inhabit them.

For the bats of West Africa, long feared and misunderstood, that changed narrative may prove to be their best chance at survival.