Rinzin Phunjok Lama

Rinzin Phunjok Lama is international award winner conservation biologist focusing his work on wildlife and communities in trans-Himalayan region of Nepal.

A native of Nyinba Community in Humla District of Nepal, Lama comes from one of the world’s wildest and most isolated places and has been an advocate for local community engagement for biodiversity conservation and sustainability.

From government schooling in his native village, one of the most rural parts of Nepal, to the University of Göttingen in Germany and Lincoln University in New Zealand, the path has not been easy yet this has only made him more determined to help his community and ecology. Being the first graduate in the field of nature conservation from Humla, his vision is to strengthen community-based conservation focusing on capacity building of community institutions, promotion of local citizen scientist, social enterprise development for livelihood diversification and promoting good governance to build more pliable and self-reliant communities. He is particularly interested in high-altitude wildlife and their ecology, human-wildlife conflict, human footprints and landscape change, climate change, citizen science and indigenous system of resource management.

Lama has been awarded the WWF Nepal Conservation Award in 2020 and the prestigious Rolex Award for Enterprise 2021 in recognition of his effort for biodiversity conservation in Nepal’s Trans-Himalayas.