Nigerian Rachel Ikemeh wins Rolex Award for saving rare red monkey

Nigerian naturalist Rachel Ikemeh is the 2026 laureate of the Rolex Award for her work with communities in the Niger Delta to safeguard the region’s ecology and the critically endangered Niger Delta red colobus monkey.

One of the 25 most endangered primates in the world, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the global authority on the health of the world’s species, is the red colobus (Piliocolobus epieni), a monkey the communities in the area call the epieni. It was first scientifically reported in 1993. At the time, it was estimated that there were roughly 10,000 epieni inhabiting its limited area in the Niger Delta. But by 2013, their numbers had dwindled to only hundreds, not thousands, of individuals, Ikemeh said in a research.

In 2021, Ikemeh and colleagues helped create a community-protected area of 1,010 hectares (2,496 acres) for the epieni in Apoi, a town within the monkey’s habitat.

The monkey population in the community-protected forest had doubled by 2024, from 90 individuals in 2021 to 180-200, Ikemeh told Mongabay in an email. The team has subsequently helped establish community conservation areas in the nearby communities of Garnaut and Kokoloama, she added.

Ikemeh said the medal “feels less like a personal honor and more like validation for the community model itself.

She said she is positive about the future of the epieni since she has seen the perception of the community surrounding their conservation model change over the years. “The same community that was suspicious of us coming to ‘collect their forest’ for the government now talks about epieni as a source of pride, something that put their village on the map,” said Ikemeh. “That change in attitude is the real conservation infrastructure. That’s what makes this conservation story so meaningful to tell.”

He claimed that the inhabitants of the Apoi village had invited six other communities to learn from their community conservation strategy.

But there are still problems with conserving epieni. “Outside the protected areas and across the Niger Delta region, there are still threats from oil pollution, logging is rampant, overfishing, indiscriminate hunting, and recently black sand mining by the seashores, amongst others,” added Ikemeh. Also, the population of epieni is still small overall and limited to a small area, so a disease breakout or surge in unrest could reverse a lot of this work in a hurry.

Most of the funding for their work is tied to specific short-term contracts and projects, she added. Moreover, although communities have accepted conservation, the economic pressures, such as poverty and unemployment, still exist, Ikemeh noted.

With the Rolex Award of 100,000 Swiss francs ($123,000), her team would be able to establish four additional community conservation areas near Apoi, Ikemeh stated. This will contain the region’s first locally managed maritime community conservation area. She also said the money will help them develop a mobile environmental education program to reach communities they haven’t been able to go to.

Banner image: Nigerian conservationist Rachel Ikemeh is among the winners of the 2026 Rolex Awards. Photo: Rolex Awards.