Updated

Kenyan conservationist Raabia Hawa, founder of the Ulinzi Africa Foundation, was honoured with the 2026 Tusk Award for Conservation in Africa, which provides her group with three years of funding, Mongabay reported on 2026-11-15. Hawa works in Lamu and Tana River counties, a biodiversity hotspot on Kenya's northern coast near the Somali border, where protecting habitats often means challenging industrial fishing and extractive industries. She has been targeted by al-Shabaab for this work, and has faced death threats. Hawa founded Ulinzi in 2014, a former broadcast journalist and Montessori teacher, to provide ranger patrols against elephant poaching; the work has since widened to illegal industrial bottom-trawling and to supporting communities resisting mining concessions. In 2021 her marine team found a trawler holding 48 endangered species, including sharks, rays and guitarfish, and the owner reportedly offered money to stop. Mongabay reported that the Director of Public Prosecutions has not prosecuted the case, and that the Minister of Wildlife committed to keeping Kipini a trawling-free zone after community letters. Hawa dedicated the award to her father, Abdul Kadir Hawa.