2024 Regional Distinguished Service Award Winner announced!
Nunia Thomas-Moko
As part of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) Awards Programme, The Society for Conservation Biology Oceania Section (SCBO) is thrilled to announce that the recipient of our 2024 Regional Distinguished Service Award is Nunia Thomas-Moko, Director of NatureFiji-MareqetiViti.
NatureFiji-MareqetiViti is Fiji’s only domestic NGO working solely for the conservation and sustainable management of Fiji’s unique natural heritage.
SCBO is honoured to recognise Nunia’s extraordinary contributions to the conservation of Fiji’s natural heritage through project implementation, community engagement, public awareness-raising, and contribution to national and intergovernmental conservation initiatives.
Nunia joined NatureFiji-MareqetiViti in 2007 after completing a Master’s degree in island ecology. As its Director, Nunia heads a team of staff, interns and volunteers who are working to enhance Fiji’s biodiversity and habitat conservation, protect endangered species and promote sustainable use of natural resources. She oversees the 22 projects that the organisation has run since 2007, which are hugely varied in scope and supported by a diverse set of national and international project and funding partners.
Nunia also has a strong interest in traditional, sustainable livelihoods, and co-leads several of NFMV’s partnership projects within Fiji that are looking to develop a uniquely “Pacific” community-based approach to conserving island forests, which are home to the majority of the region’s threatened birds.
Nunia also makes an enormous contribution to national and intergovernmental conservation initiatives. She has been a member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Steering Committee since 2013 and was recently elected Regional Vice Chair for Oceania. She is the technical advisor on Fiji’s government-led National Protected Areas Committee and the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan Species Working Group; and co-chair of the Fiji Key Biodiversity Areas National Coordinating Group. She is also an elected member of the BirdLife International Global Council.
Dr Clare Morrison, a Lecturer at the Griffith University School of Environment and Science, said that “despite her many formal leadership roles, Nunia remains at heart a grassroots conservationist. She is passionate about engaging and involving local communities, particularly women and children, in conservation programs and activities that conserve biodiversity but also utilise and protect the culture and traditional knowledge associated with biodiversity”.
Nunia will accept the SCBO 2024 Regional Distinguished Service Award at the 2024 Hawai’i Conservation Conference being held in Honolulu in August. She will also participate as a forum speaker during the public afternoon of the conference in a forum being hosted by SCBO entitled ‘Voices across Moananuiākea (expansive ocean) – Oceania Forum’. The forum will provide an opportunity for Indigenous conservation practitioners from Oceania (Pacific Islands/Australia/Aotearoa New Zealand) to share experiences and knowledge, and for people from Hawaiʻi and the broader region to engage in a dialogue about conservation and cultural practice.
SCB Regional Awards are supported by Wiley, publisher of the SCB journals Conservation Biology, Conservation Letters and Conservation Science & Practice. You can find out more about the awards at https://conbio.org/mini-sites/scb-awards/about-scb-awards/regional-awards/. The Society for Conservation Biology is a global professional society whose mission is to advance the science and practice of conserving Earth’s biological diversity. SCB was established in 1986, it has over 4,000 members, and it is headquartered in Washington, DC.