Buffett Awards

Prior to this assignment, I was not familiar with the Buffett Awards. However, after conducting this assignment I regard this award to be one of the most important conservation awards, as it empowers local conservationists that receive ill attention. Overall, I found the Buffett Award assignment to be very challenging, in a positive way, and inspiring. From both regions, all previous Buffett Award winners had achievements that deserved significant recognition even among the most well known conservation biologists. The work performed by these grassroot conservationists has resulted in successful mitigation of wildlife poaching, environmental community education and biodiversity protection efforts, climate change research, and development of sustainable farming techniques, to name a few. Two previous Buffett Award winners from Africa that were not selected as our winner, stood out to me in very contrasting ways. Through learning about these two candidates, …show more content…
This website provides an international outlet for conservationists to share their stories and receive donations. Before Nancy Knowlton’s speech on the importance of telling conservation success stories, I actually ranked Kahumbu as one of the lowest candidates when trying to determine the winner from Africa. However, I now would rank Kahumbu as one of the highest candidates. Due to this website, conservation stories can reach a larger audience. The inherent value of how a conservation story will impact a person is immeasurable. As Knowlton pointed out in her speech, telling stories is an important part of conservation that is often forgotten about. My dissertation is on the West African manatee, one of the least studied marine mammals. Observing the power of telling stories through Wildlifedirect, I now plan on sharing my research stories, once my research is completed, to increase the education and awareness of this endangered marine