Dr Olivier Nsengimana, winner of the 2025 Whitley Gold Award, has been featured on BBC News, where he spoke about his inspiring work to protect Grey Crowned Cranes across East Africa.
A Rwandan veterinarian and former Gorilla Doctor, Olivier first received a Whitley Award in 2018 for his transformative efforts to rescue Rwanda’s Grey Crowned Crane population from the brink of extinction. Since then, Olivier and his team at the Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association (RWCA) have quadrupled the number of wild cranes in the country, eliminated the illegal trade of the species, and empowered local people as conservation champions to lead sustainable solutions within their communities.
“Community is at the centre of everything we do, and we believe we cannot succeed without having communities on board.”
Olivier’s Gold Award, donated by the Friends of the Whitley Fund for Nature, celebrates the outstanding progress he has made and supports the next ambitious phase: scaling crane conservation beyond Rwanda’s borders. With the cranes migrating across borders, regional cooperation is key to protecting them throughout their range. Thanks to support from WFN’s Continuation Funding in 2021, Olivier laid the foundations for cross-border partnerships. His latest plans focus on scaling up transboundary protection efforts to safeguard both the cranes and the wetland ecosystems they rely on.
In his BBC interview, Olivier shares how community engagement, science, and collaboration are combining to create a conservation model with lasting regional impact.
