Zuzana Burivalova, a tropical forest ecologist who uses sound to understand the health of forests globally, was recently named the winner of the 2026 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award. The award is an initiative of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
“Receiving this award feels really humbling, and also special, maybe particularly so during times that are challenging for work in environmental issues and conservation,” Burivalova told Mongabay by email. “I see getting an award like this to also mean taking the responsibility for doing as much as I can for biodiversity conservation in the years to come.”
An associate professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, U.S., and the principal investigator of the Sound Forest Lab, Burivalova has worked in forests across the world, including Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Peru, Madagascar, and Ecuador.
Within those forests, Burivalova and her colleagues have placed remote audio recorders, which allow them to listen to mammals, birds, amphibians, and insects, all day long, all year round. The sound data offer a baseline of what life currently sounds like inside those forests. They also provide valuable information to understand what’s changing over time.
Burivalova has collaborated with Mongabay on the Conservation Effectiveness platform that examines how well (or not) various conservation strategies work.
“It’s a huge encouragement to know that work on biodiversity conservation in tropical forests and beyond is seen as important,” Burivalova said. “It makes me feel proud of our lab.”
Founder and chair Tony Pritzker, left, presented Zuzana Burivalova the 10th annual Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award. Image courtesy of UCLA.
The Pritzker award includes $100,000 in prize money. Burivalova told Mongabay she hopes to use the money to scale up her Soundscape Baselines Project so that it can partner with more local scientists and communities in intact forest areas. “I would also like to build a portfolio of conservation projects that have used the soundscape baselines, to show how exactly they can be used.”
Finalists Doris Njagi and Suzanne Pierre received $15,000 each.
Njagi is the founder of Forest Restored, which works with tens of thousands of smallholder farmers to restore degraded land across East Africa by growing native trees.
Pierre is a microbial ecologist and founder of the Critical Ecology Lab, a U.S.-based nonprofit that investigates how human activities have affected ecological processes such as carbon and nitrogen cycling and relationships between plants and microbes.
Burivalova said she “felt incredibly honored” to stand on the podium together Njagi and Pierre, whom she called inspiring.
Banner image: Zuzana Burivalova recording in Bavaria. Image courtesy of Tobias Corts.
