Paola Bouley

2022 Fellow

Paola Bouley (she/her) is an Ecologist, National Geographic Explorer, and 2022 Women for the Environment Africa Fellow. She was born and grew up in South Africa, pursued her education on the U.S. West Coast, and returned to Africa, where she now lives in Mozambique.

Paola co-founded (2021) and co-directs the Malamba Coastal Collaborative in the heart of the Inhambane Seascape and Mission Blue Hope Spot. And she co-founded (2023) and co-directs the Macossa-Tambara Ecosystem of central Mozambique. She is also a founding member of Associação NATURA Moçambique and Azul Consultoria Lda.

Paola’s professional expertise spans close to three decades in community-led ecological restoration, endangered species recovery, human-wildlife coexistence, and environmental advocacy. As an environmental leader – and one passionate about healing Earth’s living systems – she is committed to  placing women at the forefront of the environmental movement and co-creating impactful, just and collaborative, and knowledge-driven approaches to accelerate the protection of Earth’s biodiversity.

Her work and that of her teams has been featured internationally by the UNDP, IUCN, New York Times, WIRED Magazine, The Guardian, PBS Nova, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Tangled Bank Studios, Seeker, and National Geographic. She has published in multiple peer-reviewed academic journals including Biological Conservation, PLOS One, Ecology and Evolution, Nature, and Science. She is currently authoring her first book.

Between 2012-2021 she led the post-war recovery of African lion, painted dog, and leopard in one of Mozambique’s flagship national parks, and co-founded the nation’s first pangolin recovery center. She trained one of the 1st generations of young Mozambican wildlife veterinarians, and worked side-by-side with 400+ park rangers to raise the number of indigenous lions in the park from 30 individuals teetering on the brink of extinction, to more than 200. Coordinating an international team, she led  Mozambique’s 1st successful reintroduction of painted dogs and leopards towards restoring ecological balance in a post-war setting. She also led the establishment of Mozambique’s largest digital radio array serving a protected area, and forged a partnership with the Paul Allen Institute and customization of EarthRanger for Mozambican wildlife rangers. Her expertise includes marine and terrestrial ecology, protected area management, endangered species and ecosystem restoration and monitoring, human-elephant/carnivore coexistence, performance monitoring, and operations.

Paola holds a Bachelor of Science in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and Master of Science in ecology and biological systematics from San Francisco State University’s Estuary and Ocean Science Center.

Keywords: human-wildlife coexistence, community-led, ecological restoration, rewilding, lions, pangolins.

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