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.  

RACHEL ASHEGBOFEH IKEMEH

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.

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I think the entirety of the work we do, we are navigating a lot of embedded preconceived notions or traditions or culture. And especially in Africa, none of that is easy to navigate. You can't do without stepping on somebody's toes or upsetting the system that was in place. For example, at one of the sites where we created a conservation area, we worked there for seven years before the establishment of that conservation area. It shouldn't take that long or it wouldn't take that long normally, probably a year or two years because you've learned everything you need to know. But in those seven years, we got to really understand how the people think, what their histories are and their experiences, and then considering all that, I think is one of the most important things in navigating traditions and cultures and also respecting those people's beliefs.

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There's no question, we are in a state of conservation emergency. And we have a real situation on our hands and it's so fragile that if we take a step back, we could say goodbye to two types of chimpanzee species and the forest is also on the brink of disappearing forever. And when I started as a conservation researcher, there was kidnapping and insecurity throughout the Nile Delta region, and it was immersed in a lot of oil politics and civil conflicts. Kidnapping and insecurity ran throughout that region. Let's not forget that Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation now. We are over 200 million people in the country, and it's a growing population of young people who are looking for means of livelihood and on the lookout to find space to live. So parts of the forest within one year would suddenly become a new village.

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One of my teammates was asking a young boy "What would you like to be when you grow up?" And he pointed at me and said, "That's what I want to be." When I started as a female doing conservation and going to these communities, at that time I was disrespected and really looked down on for being out there doing what I was doing. Like it's either "You're not married. You don't have children. What are you doing in the middle of the forest looking for monkeys?" So to have a young man look up to a woman as a role model, especially in an African society, it's an experience that will live with me forever because I realize that not only are we bringing species back from the brink of extinction, but we are changing the way society thinks. And it makes me glad that I've been persistent.

We saw that in real life how a community can be transformed to the point that an entire community has become conservation champions. So knowing that people can turn 180 and really become the protectors of the same species they tried to wipe out.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Riya Patel with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this episode was Riya Patel.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).