When the habitat of an endangered bat went up in smoke, this ecologist dedicated herself to ending wildfires | CNN

High up in the mountainous rainforests of southeastern Nigeria, a joyous shriek reverberated from one of the area’s many caves. Its echo traced back to Iroro Tanshi, whose trembling hands cupped a tiny flitting form that no one was certain even lived in the country. From unmitigated joy to gut-wrenching loss, shame to satisfaction, Tanshi has experienced all manner of emotions on her winding road to last month receiving the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize — an annual award recognizing global environmental leaders. Yet even 10 years on from venturing into Cross River State’s Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary and finding the short-tailed roundleaf bat — a species previously not confirmed to live in Nigeria and rarely sighted in its known range of Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea — the conservation ecologist still struggles to articulate the uniquely bittersweet feeling of the discovery. “There is a loss that comes from just knowing that you can’t truly communicate how you’re feeling about something to somebody else,” Tanshi, 41, told CNN. “In my case, I had local assistants who weren’t formally trained … the only thing I said to them was, ‘Our lives are