Robin's Nest from American Humane - Connecting Habitats, Saving Elephants: Hilde Vanleeuwe on Wilder Things and the Future of Wildlife

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

In this inspiring episode of Robin’s Nest, Dr. Robin Ganzert sits down with Hilde Vanleeuwe, Ph.D., a fearless conservation biologist whose 30-year career has been devoted to protecting Africa’s iconic wildlife, particularly elephants. From rescuing birds in her childhood home in Belgium to leading groundbreaking conservation programs across Africa, Hilde shares her journey of perseverance, passion, and purpose.Listeners will hear about her extraordinary fieldwork, from walking over 500 km of elephant transects on Mt. Kenya to transforming elephant protection in the Congo, and her innovative efforts with Wilder Things, a conservation initiative focused on connecting habitats through riparian wildlife corridors. Hilde also reflects on the significance of being a finalist for the Kiessling Prize and shares her vision for scaling ecological connectivity to help species adapt to climate change. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of the impact one dedicated individual can have on the future of wildlife and wild places.

Welcome back to Robins Nest. Joining me today is Dr. Hilda Van Leia, a fearless conservation biologist who has spent over 30 years protecting Africa's elephants and wild places. She's the founder of Wilder Things, a groundbreaking initiative to connect habitats, and a finalist for the prestigious Kiesling Prize. Her story is one of passion, perseverance, and hope for our planet's future. Welcome to Robbins Nest. Many of us feel a deep bond with animals, from the pets we cherish at home to the endangered species in nature. Join us for lively, informative conversations where together we will build a more humane world. I am so excited about this episode of Robbins Nest because we have a true hero in conservation and a Kiesling Prize finalist joining us.

You know, as we think about conservation, we think about what we've learned from a young age to make the plant. better. We think about passion, perseverance, and certainly pursuit of protection for animals. And my guest today is the epitome of all of that. Dr. Hilda Van Leop is here with us today. Dr. Hilda, thank you so much for being here. And please pronounce your name properly with your beautiful accent that I can't seem to get. It's Hilda van Leu. Isn't that beautiful? You know, I've been following your work for some time. And first of all, congratulations. on being a international prize finalist for the Kisling Prize. It's really wonderful.

Yes, that's amazing, actually, for me. It's wonderful. And it's a privilege to get to know you after having followed your work. And I would love for you to share with all of our guests in Robbins Nest today a little bit about your work and in Africa as well. Where do you want me to start? I mean... Well, what inspired you to be in the space of conservation?

Well, I think I have a very deep empathy for animals in general, and it has sort of, it has shaped my entire life. And my aim is to save as many animals and wild places as I can whilst I'm alive. And I think in my early days, I was a bit more reckless, and I was more of an activist and, yeah, naive for sure. and but my actions did make a change and I decided okay let's be more strategic about this and I did a PhD on elephants and then I started actually working in conservation and I did things like I looked more into

how could we in the long run save a big species like an elephant and it occurred to me that one of the biggest threads today is not so much poaching anymore, but it's a demographic growth and habitat fragmentation and you get less and less habitat for them and you get more and more people moving into their habitats. Because back in the day, protected areas weren't really created to sustain a big animal like that. They were just created for their beauty. Yes. So then I worked in forested Africa, which gave an extra challenge because of course you don't know where they are. You don't know where the threats are, you don't, you can't see anything from an aeroplane or a drone when you fly over

forest. So together with some savvy scientists, we created indirect observation methodologies that we perfected and then we combined that with GIS with geographical information systems to make maps sort of that showed where are the animals, where are the threats. And doing so, we started being able for the first time for these vast, vast areas, if you have like 100 rangers to protect 10,000 square kilometers, if you don't know where to sort of focus the attention for protection, you're going to lose out. So with these new strategies, this mapping, we really managed to focus on threats. And then I became a part manager myself for 11 years. And where was that? In the Congo, in Congo Brazzaville, I managed Concordiduli National Park, which is half marine, half terrestrial.

Yes. And I applied my methodology on site, and I'm happy to say that we reduced poaching to nil and our elephant population doubled during the time we were there. But doubled not through birth. It wouldn't be possible in such a short time. But that goes to show if you create what I call core areas, which are of heightened protection, you not only save the animals in it, but you start attracting animals from outside because elephants are very savvy at finding the safe places.

And then wherever you have, of course, I find it very important if we could save as much parks as possible because I also learned that so many people, parks in Africa or what we call paper parks which are basically they don't have any management they exist legally

but there is no money for them there is nobody there to actually protect them and most of them are almost poached empty but the idea is like if you could save these places yes reignite some management

in them it would be sorted so that's what I did basically Basically, I started using my survey skills and my mapping skills to survey very forgotten areas, but many and the size of like 100,000 square kilometers type of area, three times Belgium's sort of size. And we managed to, it ignited like I had hoped, sort of the EU to refinance in these areas. most of them were a francophone Africa because that's where the forests is and I'm Belgian, but that really doesn't have anything to do with it. But I did it a bit in both.

I went to DRC, but Congo, mostly Congo. And then Kenya contacted me, the Kenya Wildlife Service, saying, look, we are very good at counting elephants, but just not in our forests. Because they too have, they don't have a lot of forest, but their forest is extremely important because therefore they only have like 5% forest but they didn't know how to count elephants in forests so I helped them too and I think in a lifespan

so I did 11 years of that and then in the last 10 years of my life I became a donor well I mean I was put in charge of the Disney Elephant Conservation Fund and by WCS WCS had a contract I worked 20 years for WCS and I learned with everything I'd done in my life to that the upcoming problem of

habitat fragmentation that we had to start looking into habitat connectivity yes because of course when when you now manage to protect the protected areas but not the migration routes because an elephant when urine needs can't be sustained it'll move yes yeah so and now it can't because people have settled in what we call the corridors. Yes. And then, of course, these are not colonial era. This is not the, you can't just tell people move. This was, this was elephant territory.

Right. So I looked into it and knowing elephants very well, having walked thousands of kilometers of elephant trails, I thought like, oh, wait a minute, but elephants never stray far from water when they migrate. Yes. They follow rivers. And I thought, why don't we try rivers?

because rivers, people can't settle in rivers. We need these rivers protected anyway for people and wildlife. So let's do the survey. So I used my skills. And we surveyed quite a few rivers around mine, Kenya, and we took the one that was a natural corridor, so that had most sign of elephants and other species around it. We started promoting it as a corridor.

And it's working. I mean, what's happening is because you get to the, the ecosystem services come back when you restore it, and that benefits all life. And if you protect elephant habitat, you protect everything else in it. That's exactly right. I want to go back a little bit into your story, which is so fascinating. First of all, how many people do you know has a PhD in elephants? You know, that's really, really important.

But you started out early in your career, as you said, an activist, and you had lessons learned. You know, I meet so many people who want to make a difference with animals, and they ask, how do they begin and what are those lessons learned? Can you share a couple of those? Because then you went down a scientific track that is so remarkable. Yeah, I think, I mean, activists have their role to play. Yes, absolutely. But I think it's not always very sort of based on facts. So I, and usually there's a time in life where you move away from that.

and I think I mean the mistakes I made I was very bold and reckless and I had sort of attacked managers who were involved in poaching and to the point that it became very risky for me

and I had to leave countries and stuff but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger as they say so I became more savvy about it and a bit less less reckless and a bit less naive about it And I think the way we do it now, it's like, it was a very good idea to try to sort of help people with, because they didn't know, we didn't know what was happening in the forest.

It's a very big problem. I mean, you can't see anything in a forest. So, and we have a methodology, and they still try to get new systems. They're testing drones on the canopy. They're testing camera trap methodologies. Yes. And it's getting there, but it's just not there yet. So we still use the line track, the transect methodology, where we train the rangers to walk along a line,

notes all the signs they see, and with that we make distribution maps of those signs, and we know where the threats are, we know where the elephants are. The use of technology and the science behind it, it's so stunning. And I know you see a future for additional science, the face of AI, and the engagement. I'd love for you to share a little bit about that. And then I know you have a special story about some of the beginnings of your journey. Well, I started, I was so motivated to go and work with wildlife that I sort of stepped into the EU offices without even having an appointment and sort of walking, waltzing into a bureau, sort of asking, please use me, please try. And you don't need to pay me.

I'll just, and they actually, I was an explorer of Ozala National Park. And Ozala was small, it wasn't very big, it's in the Congo, and it was 2,800 square kilometers of tropical forest. And the thing was, it's so swampy and it's so remote. I was with a team of seven locals, which was all expotures, basically, and some of them were picking me or so. And I explored, I was in the middle of nowhere, there were no radio, there was nothing back then. And strangely enough, all the nice things,

I found outside the park boundary. And the way I explored it very quickly, the only way to get through difficult terrain like this was to follow elephant trails. And that's how I actually got into it. I mean, I walked thousands of kilometers of elephant trails. And we found gems, like incredibly sort of forest clearings with the gorillas and elephants and everything in it.

But we also found quite some horror clearings too where there were like five hundred, carcasses sort of spread in and around the clearing and both I mean both these discoveries actually helped expand the park to 13,600 square kilometers so that was my first so so my first sort of action that had a result and then I thought like wow not bad to sort of yeah quadruple a park that's an understatement not bad I would say that is incredible And I think that's where it came from, this idea of like, let's do more of it. Let's bring more areas in trouble and let's protect it.

So I did my entire life exactly that, basically. I went to find the parks that had been forgotten and I put them back on the map, basically. That was sort of my best shot at saving as many animals as I could. That's really so inspiring. What's next for you? What's next for me? Well, I, probably foolishly, I left WCS last year, around this time last year.

But mostly, I mean, I worked 20 years for the Wildlife Conservation Society. The Disney Fund was coming to an end because there was a 10-year fund. And I didn't want to move to Rwanda where their headquarters were. And also, I think I had this new experience having been a coordinator of a fund that I now distributed to other organizations, that combining my own expertise, together with expertise of other organizations, we got so much done, a lot more than I could ever have done on my own as WCS with just my capabilities.

So I started partnering with the amazing people, and so that's how we did the corridor. We started introducing sand dams in Savo. We had like a very fancy automatic gates in boundary fences that we installed that only opened for elephants. So, I mean, we got so much done. And I thought, okay, maybe I continue doing this on my own. And so I started my own company. I left WCS and I started my own company.

But then all these crises happened in the last year. and unfortunately, the donors I was used to were mostly American, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, USAID, and of course they are quite blocked for the moment to sort of priorities have changed. They're not allowed to channel funds to the developing countries. So I'm struggling. I'm struggling to get known. It's on top of that, it's a new organization. The name is not known yet.

And the name is? Wilder things. Wilder things. Wilder things. And hence the reason why for me this opportunity is absolutely amazing because it gives visibility, recognition. And it's a step in and it's sort of, I was starting to get quite negative about the idea of my company and then the message came that I was a finalist and I literally jumped about

two meter high. That's wonderful. So as we opened, Dr. Hilda is a finalist for the International Prize for Species Conservation that we have named at Global Humane Society in honor of Wolfgang Kiesling, who's a legend and an icon himself. And I know that the judging panel was so impressed from your commitment to animals, your passion for elephants, of course, but importantly, the systemic approach to making change happen by bringing back parks, making them real again, making them viable.

So I think that is such a great testimony and part of your legacy. And it allows people to be inspired by you and also support your vision for the future. So if you were awarded the Kiesling Prize and additional funds, what would you do next? Oh, I know exactly what I would do. I knew you did. I knew you would. Please share. I would give a portion of it to, I'm in my spare time. I'm also a chairman of the KSPCA in Nanyuki, which is the Kenya Society for Protection of Animals. Yes.

And it's new and, you know, welfare is very, very new. Yes. They're very necessary also. It's terrible what's happening there. It's small. I would give a small portion to that. So there's probably like $10,000 just to get them going. And then I would probably put in another sandam in Savo, which would be another person.

probably 30 or 40,000, and then the rest would go to protecting rivers as corridors and expand the idea and, yeah, just get it, get it some momentum and because this is quite scalable what I'm doing. It's novel, and because it's novel, I'm hoping, I hope also with the political, sort of in this political climate, there might be some changes and the years that come that will again also bring some more funds available for such things because for the moment we're quite starved of possibilities but for the moment i i survive basically doing consultancies yes and my last one was to make an elephant protection plan for upemba national park yes in d rc which i also surveyed in 2008

and which was one of the parks that nobody had been there because it's in it's in a rebel zone they had killed the conservator. So people didn't want to go there. And I think we were the first, I was the first one back in there, sort of putting it back on the map. And today it's, it's managed by an organization. It's going really well. So that's a park that would not have lived today, I think, if I hadn't done that. And I found it very nice of them to sort of ask me to help them make an elephant's protection plan. That's so appropriate. So full circle. Well, there's two things I wanted to follow up with you on. You know, a global humane society opened a sanctuary the Bushman's River Corridor in South Africa. Because we do believe the river-based corridors

are so necessary. We'll be reintroducing black and white rhino there and elephants. So that's one reason. I was so fascinated and wanted to get to know you personally because the river corridors are hotspots for biodiversity. Yes, exactly. And if you bring back some of the keystone species, It's just the circle of life is so beautiful in a river-based area. So thank you for your... It makes sense, and it's real. And we're doing it at Global Humane Society, so thank you. And secondly, your work as the chairman for the Kenya,

prevention for cruelty to animals and your work and your passion there, Global Humane Society is honored today to offer you a grant of $10,000 U.S. dollars to help you launch the Kenya Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. because at Global Humane Society, that is what we must do. It's, it's... Thank you so much. So touching to me. So thank you for your leadership there.

Thank you. And we must do more to help. So Dr. Hilded, what a pleasure to get to know you. And I'm honored to give you this grant today from Global Humane Society. Thank you so much. And congratulations on being a finalist for the International Prize for Species Conservation. What a great day in Robbins Nest and we're saving animals together. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to this week's

episode of Robins Nest. Please like, subscribe, and follow. And thanks for all you do to build a more humane world.