Dr. Farina Othman, winner of a 2025 Whitley Award, has been interviewed by CNN for an in-depth piece spotlighting her efforts to protect the Endangered Bornean elephant in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.
A subspecies of the Asian elephant with fewer than 1,500 left in the wild, Bornean elephants face growing threats from habitat loss, fragmentation, and human-wildlife conflict. Through her NGO Seratu Aatai, Farina leads a landscape approach to conservation, working with local communities and palm oil plantations to connect habitats, reduce conflict and foster peaceful coexistence between people and elephants.
With support from her Whitley Award, Farina will expand efforts to build corridors of wild trees through palm oil plantations, securing vital habitat for elephants and helping mitigate human-animal conflict. “If only one plantation wants to do this, it won’t work. We need to create a consortium of several plantations so that we can connect this corridor back to the wildlife sanctuary,” she said.
Read the full article on CNN, The world’s smallest elephants are facing extinction. One woman has a plan to save them
